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In recent years, a strong case has been made for identifying intensive economic growth in the provinces of Africa Proconsularis and Numidia—notably, between the second and fourth centuries AD. This thesis is supported by comparative studies of other preindustrial societies, since Roman Africa reveals virtually all the classic elements associated with this phenomenon. These include growth in agricultural production and rural population, an increase in exports of primary products, raised levels of import substitution, larger-scale units of production (farms to oileries, workshop to manufactory pottery production), the emergence of a society that was patently involved in risk taking, economic calculation, technological innovation, and other “rational” economic behavior. In this respect, Africa stands out from many other provinces of the Roman Empire, where growth of this sort did not occur. This chapter considers the factors that may account for this difference and suggests a few pointers for further work in this developing field of research.

The Roman imperial system of law, courts and jurisdiction was a sphere in which the Roman empire exercised a profound impact on the society and culture of its provinces. In Roman Africa, law and courts were central to what it meant to be and become ‘Roman’. This was the case both in the sense of adopting Roman legal forms and institutions, and also in the sense of adopting a Roman model of elite education, where training in forensic rhetoric and pleading in the courts was instrumental for the making of successful careers in politics and administration. This chapter examines the development and professionalization of legal and forensic activity in Roman Africa, from the establishment of the Principate to the age of Augustine (c.31 BCE–435 CE). Key topics that are addressed include: career structures, the typology and social profile of ‘lawyers’ (advocates, legal consultants, assessors, judges, notaries), the place of law in the rhetorical curriculum, profession and professionalization as analytical categories.

This chapter argues that during the Vandal century of rule in Roman Africa (429‐533 CE), a form of racial profiling and racist thinking expressed through skin colour prejudices against black peoples emerges in Latin satiric epigrams from the Anthologia Latina as the power centre shifts between white, ‘neutral‐coloured,’ and black ethnic communities. Black stereotypes of fearful demons and darkness and of repulsive filth and ugliness especially mark black Africans as dangerous ‘others’ infringing on Roman‐African interests. Blacks become another act in the Anthologia Latina's cultural ‘freak show’ of exotic animals and disfranchised outcasts, entertainers, sexual deviants, the disabled, the ugly as constructed by a Mediterranean Roman society ‘neutrally’ and normatively self‐realized between white, ‘Germanic’ Vandal power and black, ‘Moorish’ African marginalization.

This introduction summarizes recent work on Vandal Africa and sets out the fundamental problem with the kingdom. The Vandals’ arrival in North Africa provoked a conflict between groups described by most surviving texts as Catholics and Arians. This conflict led Victor of Vita, the author of the sole detailed contemporary historical account of the kingdom, to portray Vandal rule as persecution, a reign of terror by heretical barbarians. Recent revisionist historiography has salvaged a functioning post-imperial polity from Victor’s apologetic narrative; this introduction shows how the same critical analysis can reshape our understanding of the kingdom’s ecclesiastical controversy.

Roman Africa is distinguished by the quantity and diversity of surviving evidence for the operation of public law. Although there is a lack of evidence for rules of jurisdiction such as survive for Sicily, the Iberian provinces, or especially Cisalpine Gaul, epigraphic material from Africa does allow for reconstruction of public law institutions that bear on the themes of this volume in at least two fields. First, the lex agraria provides information about the nature and degree of interest on the part of Roman authorities in Rome to regulate control of agricultural land. Second, a recently recovered inscription from Carthage, which has been interpreted as the lex sacra, probably of the cult of the Cereres (but which is probably a feriale for the sacra publica of the colony), provides detailed evidence for both the importation from Italy of Roman institutions and the preservation within the colony of the worship of indigenous gods. Each text provides information about the time of its production; they do not allow a clear-cut view for an increase in the importance of Roman norms. However, the epigraphic evidence for the spread of Roman public institutions, especially magistracies and the language of res publicae, can be situated alongside these statutes to yield a complex picture of law in the province over several hundred years.

This chapter addresses four points in an attempt to explain why African pottery (amphorae, tablewares, cooking wares, and lamps) dominated Mediterranean markets from the second century AD onwards: (1) the definition of Roman Africa, emphasizing the particular position of Mauretania Tingitana, more closely linked with Hispania than with Africa, and the scarcity of information available in Algeria, beside a lot of fairly well-investigated towns or regions in Tunisia and Western Libya; (2) the problem of the content of Roman African amphorae, which were intended for the transport not only of olive oil, but also of salsamenta and probably wine; (3) the problem of the major foodstuff the African Red Slip ware was travelling with, grain seeming to be the best candidate at least until the first half of the fifth century AD; (4) the mechanisms of ARS distribution through the whole Mediterranean.

This chapter examines the literary, archaeological, and epigraphic evidence for economic and social change in North Africa during the Roman period. The evidence for the increased exportation of African ceramics to sites around the Mediterranean from the late second century AD onwards is discussed in relation to transformations observable in the rural countryside. Traditional explanations for the African economic boom are brought up to date, with recent survey work reinforcing the picture of the development of large-scale farms producing olive oil and wine, but also highlighting the importance of other North African exports, such as textiles and marine products. Explanation for the later economic prosperity is sought in the system of exploitation which developed after the destruction of Carthage, indicated by the mass centuriation schemes known from aerial photographs, the post-Gracchan epigraphic Lex agraria of 111 BC, and the tenurial relationships attested on the inscriptions of the Bagradas Valley.

Augustine’s attitude to his parents has always encouraged psychological analysis. Any new biography must contend with this–as it represents, in any case, a good portion of the scholarly literature on Augustine’s early life. Augustine was the intellectual superior of his parents from an extremely young age. He is arguably the earliest documented case that we have of the sensitive-genius mind colliding with the blunt instrument of parental care and its applications of the lesson in life. His father, Patricius, typified the middle-class ambitions of Roman citizenship in the provinces. His lack of artistic ambition depressed his son. His mother, Monica, was a devoted Christian housewife. Augustine was inclined to sentimentalize her piety–less well known is how far her general forbearance in life was to provoke his own ambition.

This chapter re-examines the model of the ‘Circle of the Straits’ developed by M. Tarradell in the 1960s and recently reasserted by Brent Shaw, which sees the province of Mauretania Tingitana as relatively isolated from the Mediterranean economy, and having close links only to Baetica, across the Straits of Gibraltar. Using evidence from excavations at Thamusida, and other recent work in Morocco on the production and export of olive oil and of marine resources (salted fish and fish-sauce products), it is argued that although most of the province lay outside the Straits of Gibraltar, it was nevertheless fully linked into to a Mediterranean economy. We glimpse a certain amount of Roman dirigisme, and apparently participation of the army in this exploitation of the Gharb for the good of Rome; but also intensive production of olive oil and fish sauce as a market-based way of making money for the local elites.