In the course of his distinguished career, Yves Modéran published a number of seminal articles on the Vandal kingdom. At the point of his untimely death in 2010, M. was working on a substantial monograph which would have drawn together decades of work on the successors to Roman rule in North Africa. As the editor Michel-Yves Perrin explains in his preface (10–12), Les Vandales et l'Empire romain represents the part of the projected volume in a fit state for publication with minimal intervention. The book takes the reader from the pre-history of the Vandals (ch. 1) to their establishment in Africa (chs 5–6), with a final chapter on Vandal relations with the Empire until 477 (ch. 7): roughly half of M.'s provisional schema (reproduced at p. 13), which would have covered the full history of the kingdom and the Vandals' Nachleben.

If this is not the long-awaited synthesis which M. would undoubtedly have produced in different circumstances, the book instead functions as an updated ‘Variorum’ restructured as narrative history. Ch. 1 sets out a relatively optimistic reconstruction of the Vandals beyond the imperial frontiers in the first four centuries c.e., drawing on various Roman historians and ethnographers (most notably, Tacitus, Pliny and Jordanes) and material evidence (the so-called Przeworsk and Wielbark cultures are prominently cited). M. sees the Vandals as politically fractured and of secondary geopolitical importance before 400 (24, 41). Chs 2 and 3 follow the Vandals from 406 to 429, offering close readings of ancient accounts of the Rhine crossing (43–58), and their activities in Gaul (63–76) and Spain (76–91). M. is particularly perceptive on the division of Spain in 411, which he convincingly reinterprets as an imperial settlement (80–5), and the problems of later presentations of ‘Vandalism’ in Gaul (72–6; cf. 119–30 on Africa). Uniting all three chapters is a stress on the increasing heterogeneity of the group (61–2, 87–8), qualified by a rather old-school emphasis on the importance and consistency of ethnic identity (37–9), and the make-up of the Vandals as a migrating people with women and children along for the journey (45–6, 56–62).

The core of the book (chs 4–6) presents important restatements of M.'s views on central questions in Vandal history. Ch. 4 (‘L'invasion de l'Afrique’) narrates the Vandals' progress across the North African littoral from 429 to 439 (revising a paper previously published in 2006 in the acts of a Madrid conference: J. López Quiroga, A. M. Martínez Tejera et al. (eds), Gallia e Hispania en el contexto de la presencia “germánica” (ss. V–VII). Balance y perspectivas). In seeking to explain the ease of conquest, M. follows the communis opinio in dismissing accusations that Boniface (the comes Africae) invited the Vandals in, which he conjectures as a hostile presentation of very partial use of Vandal soldiers as mercenaries by the Roman military commander (98–101). Instead, M. turns to the (often overlooked) consequences of Heraclian's disastrous attempt at usurpation in 413, which dissipated the province's military resources (108–10).

Chs 5 and 6 present updates to M.'s classic article ‘L’établissement des Vandales en Afrique' (published in Antiquité Tardive 10 (2002)). ‘Le premier royaume barbare’ delineates the nature and extent of Vandal power. Responding to the work of Frank Clover, M. argues convincingly that the kingdom was effectively independent from the Roman Empire from 442, and increasingly assertive in its autonomy from 477 (131–43). Indications to the contrary are explained as the result of diplomatic necessities, and not least an imperial desire to save face using terminological niceties (135–7). Drawing on the Notitia prouinciarum et ciuitatum Africae (an African episcopal list produced in 484), M. then lays out a maximal view of Vandal control of Rome's erstwhile African provinces (143–53), though one qualified — perhaps a little belatedly — by a final paragraph on the growing incursion of Mauri (153). The following chapter (‘L’établissement territorial des Vandales') is a convincing reassertion of the view that the Vandals did indeed receive land in Africa. After recapitulating his objections to the controversial theses of Walter Goffart and Jean Durliat on the fiscal nature of barbarian settlement (156–9), M. surveys the primary texts which indicate a large-scale process of landed expropriation and redistribution (159–79). Some of the individual pieces of this case might be contested; it is difficult to see how the overall conclusion can be contradicted.

A final (unfinished) chapter (‘Les Vandales et les autres’: 183–99) re-evaluates the infamous Vandal piracy of the middle decades of the fifth century. Eschewing images of maritime dominance, M. sets these razzias in the context of continuing imperial naval activity and diplomatic engagement. The book ends with a short appendix redating the so-called ‘Vandal rostra’ of the Roman forum (201–4).

It is regrettable that Les Vandales et l'Empire romain could not take into account the outpouring of work on the Vandals in the last five to ten years, including important monographs and papers by Guido Berndt, Jonathan Conant, Éric Fournier, Andy Merrills, Richard Miles, Roland Steinacher, Konrad Vössing and Philipp Von Rummel. On a number of issues, M.'s arguments are situated in a stage of the debates which has now been somewhat superseded. (Beyond classic treatments by Ludwig Schmidt and Christian Courtois, the endnotes cluster in the late 1990s and early 2000s). It would have been fascinating, for example, to see M.'s response to recent efforts to apply directly to the Vandals changing notions of ethnicity and the utility of material evidence for its study (robustly challenged in their more general articulation at 15 and 34–8). All the same, this posthumous volume is an important — if necessarily imperfect — retrospect on a profound scholarly contribution.