Ethnicity, Ethnogenesis, and the Vandals: Some Remarks on a Theory of Emergence of the Barbarian Gens*1
Acta Poloniae Historica 112, 2015 PL ISSN 0001–6892 Robert Kasperski Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences ETHNICITY, ETHNOGENESIS, AND THE VANDALS: SOME REMARKS ON A THEORY OF EMERGENCE OF THE BARBARIAN GENS*1 Abstract There are two objectives behind this article. First, it seeks to trace down the pedigree of a theory described in scholarly discourse as the ‘ethnogenesis model’. As is often believed, the theory originally was, essentially, an innovative concept proposed by Reinhard Wenskus, the German researcher. My article puts forth the idea whereby it was Walter Schlesinger who had laid the foundations for the theory, whose concept was further developed by Wenskus. My other purpose was to verify the basics of the theory itself, based on relevant empirical material; specifi cally, I mainly deal with original sources reporting on the ethnic composition and history of the Vandal people. Keywords: ethnogenesis model, Reinhard Wenskus, Walter Schlesinger, ethnicity of the barbarian peoples, gens, Vandals * My word of thanks goes to Professor Halina Manikowska of the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, for her valu- able contribution to the discussion on this essay and offer to publish it with Acta Poloniae Historica. I am also indebted to Professor Roman Michałowski of the Insti- tute of History, University of Warsaw, for having focused my attention on the ethnicity problems related to the Slavic peoples in the early Middle Ages. The under- lying papers for this essay were delivered at a Polish-German conference ‘Polish Historiography In the Face of the German Historic Science in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, held 26th–27th February 2010 in Łódź, as part of the col- laboration between the Universities of Giessen and Łódź, and at the 11th Inter- disciplinary Historical Seminar of 19th to 21st May in Hermanów.
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