The Vandals

The Vandals have gotten a lot of bad press, but they don’t necessarily deserve it, according to renowned ancient historian Konrad Vössing. His short history of this Germanic tribe shows that rather than being examples of today’s proverbial vandalism, their short history reveals one of the most astonishing episodes of migration during the late antiquity. He describes the rapid rise and fall of the Vandals, following them from Central to Southern Europe and into the North African granary of the Roman Empire. It becomes clear why the Vandals were able to establish themselves permanently there in the 5th century and even became a deadly threat to Rome and the entire Western Roman Empire—until they disappeared from history only a century later.