WI: Belisarius loses the Battle of Ad Decium?

Title says all. Would Justinian attempt another reconquest of Africa, or even one of Italy? Would the Vandals remain Arian, or would pressure from the Berbers and their own subjects eventually lead them to convert to Catholicism or Donatism the way the Visigoths eventually converted to Catholicism IOTL?
 
All depends of what happen in Constantinople, but giving Vandals still had their fleet intact (that Belisarius somehow avoided), they're going to be more wary, meaning a Byzantine quick reconquest is not a given. (Although a conquest of Italy doesn't depend from an African conquest).

At this point though, Vandals already had their collective "fundamentals" being kicked out by Maurs (up to the coast), which is more the reason of the Africano-Roman call than religious policy. If Byzzies doesn't intervene, it's not really going to end well for them.

They lead us to close this book on what should be more than a paradox. C.Courtois, achieving his thesis, tought that the real drama of roman Africa wasn't the Vandal invasion, but the rebirth of a Berber world remained itself, meaning rejecting necessary the romanity.

At the end of this long study, we wonder if the real rupture in this history wasn't the Byzantine reconquest.

Without this, in an easter Maghreb where the Roman influence was really strong, the Maur expansion could have lead, not without violence, to a Berbero-Roman civilisation, original and maintainable, as was Merovingian civilisation in Gaul.

The "divine surprise" that was Belisarius' sucessful expedition, aprooved by a roman society proclaiming its fear of the Maur, broke this possibility. Maybe did it as well condamned the future of the romanity it claimed to save.
 
All depends of what happen in Constantinople, but giving Vandals still had their fleet intact (that Belisarius somehow avoided), they're going to be more wary, meaning a Byzantine quick reconquest is not a given. (Although a conquest of Italy doesn't depend from an African conquest).

At this point though, Vandals already had their collective "fundamentals" being kicked out by Maurs (up to the coast), which is more the reason of the Africano-Roman call than religious policy. If Byzzies doesn't intervene, it's not really going to end well for them.

Actually, now that I think about it, a Catholic/Donatist Berber kingdom does seem more interesting.
 
Actually, now that I think about it, a Catholic/Donatist Berber kingdom does seem more interesting.

I doubt it would be, at least in a first time, an unified kingdom. You'd probably end up with several Romano-Berber kingdoms, on which a limited number (or even one eventually going Frankish-style absorbtion, but that wouldn't be obvious) would eventually emerge as dominating the region : we're talking about, at least, a dizen of kingdoms in the region after all. Keep in mind that you'd end up with Vandals mixing up either with Africani (African Romans) or with Romano-Berbers as well, as it probably happened IOTL with the western African regions.

As for Donatists, they're basically unmentioned by contemporary accounts. They might have survived, in more or less integrated communities, maybe more in Gaetulia (where they were importantly present by the Vth century) but doesn't seem to have played any real role by the Byzantine's arrival.

I wouldn't write off a possible but limited Donatist influence on Christian practices of a Romano-Berber continuum, but for the sake of political integration alone, their practices would be probably essentially orthodox (critically with the possibility of Nicean priest having refugeed among Berbers).
 
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