The islands of Sardinia, Corsica, and some of Sicily were controlled by Carthage. Why was it important to control these islands?
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The essay presents some parallelisms on the concept of "border" and the relations among Vandals, Byzantines and Sardinians on the one hand, and among Byzantines, Goths and Hispano-Romans, on the other, in the former Roman provinces of Sardinia and Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula) during the early Middle Ages. To do so, I analyze the modern identitarian and nationalistic uses of that historical period within the context of its historiography. In parts of both Sardinian and Iberian historiography there is the tendency to highlight the imagined 'originative' role of indigenous peoples, complemented by the relatively small influence, in some areas of northern Iberia and the mountainous center of Sardinia, of Roman colonization. In these areas, the role of Barbaricini (the inhabitants of the Civitates Barbariae of the interior of Sardinia mentioned by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian [r. 527-565]), Hispano-Romans, proud opponents of the Empire, and "true" Sardinians and Iberians have been exalted. Employing Maurice Halbwachs's theoretical rubric, I show how these specific stereotypes, historical and historiographical myths, confirmed memory and identity and were the result of continuous choices-conscious or not-of what people wanted to remember, wanted to be, and wanted to be represented as, and what that means for historical reconstruction.