Vandals, a Teutonic race, settled at their first appearance in history in the north-east of Germany in the region between the Vistula and the Oder. Thence they moved southward, suffered severe defeats from Aurelian, and later from the Goths under Geberich, and were permitted by Constantine to settle in Pannonia, where they became Christians of the Arian pattern. But at the beginning of the 5th century, urged, said his enemies, by Stilicho, they entered Gaul, and crossed the Pyrenees into Spain in 409. The Asdingian section settled in Galicia, and were almost entirely destroyed in the struggle with the Goths and Suevi; the Silingian Vandals, together with the allied Alans, settled in a part of Bætica, which received from them the name of Vandalitia (Andalusia). In 429, on the call of the rebel to the empire, Bonifacius, governor of Africa, they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, under their dreaded leader, Genserich (q.v.), carrying such devastation and ruin from the shores of the Atlantic to the frontiers of Cyrene that their name has lived on the lips of man for fourteen centuries. After the death of Genserich (477) his son, Hunneric, cruelly persecuted the Catholics, and kept the Mediterranean in terror by his piracies. His successors, Guntamund (d. 496) and Thrasamund (d. 523), were comparatively mild and tolerant rulers, but luxury had already begun to weaken the fibre of the ancient Vandals. Hilderich showed such strong leanings towards Catholic orthodoxy that his subjects grew discontented, and he was overthrown by his uncle, Gelimer, in 530. The Emperor Justinian sent Belisarius against the latter in 533, and the year after he surrendered, and was carried to Constantinople in triumph. Most of the Vandals were drafted into the imperial army, and sent to perish in the endless wars with Persia.
See the various histories of the Roman Empire, but especially Papencordt, Geschichte der vandalischen Herrschaft in Africa (Berl. 1837); also Felix Dahn's Könige der Germanen (part i.) and Hodgkin's Italy and her Invaders (vols. ii. and iii.). See also Wrede, Ueber die Sprache der Wandalen (Strasb. 1886).