History Assingment #1

Tampico:

I think that one helpful activity for the Neo-Swashbucklers would be for us to engage in the study of certain events or eras in history that might relate to our own future as a group. This is important because we live in an extremely dynamic historical time. Most people live lives in uninteresting, stable times. We do not have that luxury. At any moment we could face something like the destruction of seven US cities and the evacuation of dozens of cities which would send us into a depression and essentially destroy the US as a nation-state. We could then be re-organized into something other than a nation-state because nation-states are sitting targets to unknown groups with fissionable materials.

Here is the assignment for those who choose to accept it:

Study the activities of the Vandals from 409 to 455. List two thingsthat were done by the Vandals that should be inspirational to Neo-Swashbucklers. Hint: neither inspirational act/activity had anythingto do with the sacking of Rome.



Geoff:

Interesting period. This includes the movement into the Iberian Peninsula and the later establishment of a kingdom in North Africa right up to the sack of Rome in 455CE.

Firstly, would be the building of the Vandal fleet, to plunder theMediterranean during the reign of King Geiseric. There is some reason to think he actually started doing this before he became King in 428CE, intent of getting out of Spain (Iberia) and leaving it to the Visigoths who were hostile and too numerous for them to deal with and he used his fleet to ferry some 80,000 of his people to North Africa in 429CE. The second is almost certainly the capture of Carthage in 439 by Geiseric, who made it his capital. Geiseric conquered Sicily, Sardinia, Corsicaand the Balearic Islands and made them a Vandal state before spending the next 35 years or so looting the coasts of both the Eastern and Western Roman Empires.

Tampico:

I would add to this that part if the inspiration is that the Vandals had never been exposed to open water before ending up in southern Spain (Iberia). They had lived with the Danube as a boundary before, but had never even built river boats. Of course, it helped that there were Roman boat building facilities in Iberia - and the Vandal craft were basically copies of these - but it still inspires me that they became expert boat builders despite having zero tradition in boat building. People within the same generation went from landlubbers to boat builders to people who relied on the sea for survival and evacuation. Imagine that when they first took to sea they probably had absolutely no experience fishing in the ocean, much less doing coastal raids and engaging in sea battles.

The Vandals were flexible. No sooner had they adapted to coastal living in Spain, they do a huge evacuation to Africa. There is some evidence that they eventually became the equivalent of mercenaries and this is where I think they were misled. In my opinion, they should have just carved out there own nation-state in Africa and disengaged from world politics. Maybe they should have used booty from piracy to finance a move down the west African coast in search of lightly occupied lands that they could call their own. They could have developed into a southern version of the Vikings had they found an African equivalent of fjords as a safe base. In fact, it could have easily turned out that a rivalry could have developed between the Vandals and the Vikings.