Short Stuff: The Shortest War

Published Jun 18, 2025, 9:00 AM

How long was the shortest war in human history? Under an hour. Hard to believe? Not when you hear the story.

Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave and appropriately in this short Stuff we're going to talk about the world's shortest war.

That's right, another day rue special for the Shorty. So thanks Dave for this.

Yeah. Thanks.

This is about the Anglos Azibar War, which is generous to call this a war, but technically it's listed as such. It was really a very quick one sided conflict, so quick it is known as the shortest war. Numbers vary, but you probably see thirty eight minutes online when you look this thing up, maybe as high as forty five.

Yeah, but everyone agrees it was less than an hour this war, that's right. So Anglo'sanzibar means that it was between England and Zanzibar. Appropriately enough, it happened, did you say in eighteen ninety six?

I didn't mention the date.

It happened in eighteen ninety six, and it was between the British Royal Navy and the Sultan of Zanzibar. And you might say, like's the what's the deal here Zanzibar, it's off the coast of Tanzania today, Why would the British Navy care about this? Well, back in the eighteen nineties and before that, Zanzibar was a very important and very wealthy trading port. Was that exchanged goods between the interior of Africa and the rest of the world, Middle East, Europe, so forth. So Zanzibar was a very important place at the time.

I thought it was important because of the great Billy Joel song Zanzibar for real.

Billy joelded a record on that.

Hey, there's a song called Zanzibar. Good song, but I think it's it's about a bar named Zanzibar.

Oh, Okay, that's a good name for a bar. Yeah, I like it.

I just figured out to try and work in Billy Joel as much as possible, since you didn't know I was a fan Zanzibar. Yeah, you want to know the lyrics. I'm not going to sing it. I got the old Man's cart a jazz guitar. I got a tab at Zanzibar tonight. That's where I'll be.

I'll be what's the next line?

Then that's the course. Then it goes into the next verse.

Okay. When I hear Zanzibar, I think of the gi Jove dreadnoughts. They were in league with Cobra and they were either from Zanzibar or one of them was named Anzibar.

See, I still never watch that stuff. I missed out.

They were great, man, I know you were stuck with the big ones.

Yeah, So where do we leave. It was a busy trading port. Did you mention everything they were trading yet?

No?

Okay, he left that to me. So they were trading ivory, they were trading spices and things like that. They were getting back weaponry and textiles. But very sadly, one of the biggest exports was enslaved Africans. They estimate up to thirty thousand and slaved people were shipped out through Zanzibar all the way up through the eighteen eighties, by the way, which is almost a couple of decades after the Emancipation Proclamation. That was still going on there, and the Sultan of Zanzibar was selling his people out because he was getting rich off of this slave trade.

Yeah, and the British really didn't like this. They all they wanted, you know, to have a a to control this really expensive port. But they were very much driven by outlawing slavery in Africa as well. So those two things were big drivers of Great Britain's interest in Zanzibar, and they in eighteen ninety came up with a treaty between the British and the Germans as the Germans sorry, that basically said here's a bunch of East Africa, this is yours, this is mine, this is yours. It was part of what became known as the Scramble for Africa, and the European powers just basically carved the entire continent up. That led to decades of colonization, colonialism that didn't free up until I guess about the sixties. I think the Scramble for Africa deserves its own episode.

So yeah, for sure, yeah, very shameful stuff. But they carved out what they called zones of influence, and they made Zanzibar a British protectorate, which I looked up the difference between that and a colony. Apparently a protectorate there you know, self ruling and stuff like that, so it's not quite colony as colony light. They are still very much under the control of the British government and military. So they said Zanzibar is our protectorate, and we want to get a friendly sultan in there at the Sultanate of Zanzibar that's friendly to our needs and wants. And so they picked a guy named Hamad ben Twany and he was basically a puppet. He was the fifth Sultan of Zanzibar, and this is an eighteen ninety three. But he was not around long because Dave says Heroes, his nephew also saw cousin, this guy, Khalid ben bar Goosh, who had already had one failed run at the sultan ship. I guess is that what it would be call sultany and then try it again by almost certainly poisoning and killing either his uncle or Cousinyane. Yeah.

Yeah. And one reason that he's a suspect is right when Thuaney died, Ben Bargos showed up in the palace and was like, I'm sultan now. Everybody wanting to let you know. So if you you mentioned that Thuane's sultancy lasted only three years, Bargosh's sultancy lasted only three days because he installed himself as sultan and the British were like, we don't like you. You're not going to do our bidding. So we have a problem here.

Yeah, so they said, here's what we're gonna do. Actually, let's take a break. Everyone's wondering what the heck's going to happen next, right, Yes, all right, we'll be back right after this. That's why sk to you should know.

All right.

So I was Everyone's hanging on the edge of their seat. What are the British going to do? They're gonna engage in gunboat diplomacy, which is the very next day, they pulled up a bunch of ships to the harbor there or whatever it is there and pointed the cannons at the Royal Palace and said, you need to be out of there by nine am and we'll just be waiting here to see what you do.

That's pretty nice at nine am, you can get up early. You could exercise the breakfast, have plenty of time. Yeah. So Bargosh was like, I don't think you're going to do that. He decided he was going to call the British's bluff that they would they wouldn't fire on their own protectorate. So he brought out his own heavy artillery guns. I think the previous Sultan had actually developed a bit of a personal fighting force, so those people showed up. There were thousands of defense I saw one thousand. I'm not one hundred percent certain, but there were a bunch of Zanzibari defenders around the palace by eight am on the day that Bargosh was supposed to leave.

That's right. And he told the British consul, Basil Cave, I'm not leaving and Basil said, well, he said, we have no intention of hauling down our flag and we do not believe you will fire upon us. And Basil Cave and the British most British way possible, said hmm, we'd prefer not to attack, but unless you do as you're told, we shall certainly do. So.

You sound like again, every time you do a British accent, you sound like tankas area and mystery man.

Oh I love it.

I'll take it every time the blue rajah. Yeah. So nine am happened and just very promptly the British started pounding the Sultan's palace to dust. They made good on their promise and they just started firing on it from three warships.

And thirty eight minutes by most accounts is how long that took to completely just I don't think it. They destroyed the palace, but they put a herding on it. Two minutes into this, Bargosh literally went out the back door and fled to the German consulate and was like, please help.

Yeah, he did, and the Germans were like, okay, well we'll take care of you. And they smuggled him to Tanzania or what's now Tanzania, and I guess he lived out his days there. Did you see anything about him after that?

I looked into it, but I don't remember it all. And I was like, why am I bothering with all of this if we're not going to talk about it right? Sorry.

The thing is one of the other remarkable aspects of this very very short, less than an hour war was just how lopsided the casualties were.

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's it's interesting to talk about now, but five hundred Zanzibari's lost their lives. Yeah, in less than an hour. Yeah.

I think they just rained down our artillery on them, and like five hundred people died very very quickly. Only one British sailor was wounded. Even I think no one died on their side.

He probably slipped on the deck of a warship and like impaled his thigh on his sword. Yeah, that's what I'm guessing happened. Yeah, although I did see British marines storm the island, so it probably actually happened there.

Yeah. After this though, they because Bargash was gone, they said all right, well now we're going to install our own new sultan that we wanted to do begin with, that will be sympathetic to our needs and basically do what we say.

Yes, So there was a this is a big deal, especially at the time, because it basically showed the other nations of East Africa, like do these guys will mess you up? They're they're not messing around, and they want our they want our land, they want our nations, and that, like I said, really kind of was a flashpoint for the scramble for Africa because I think also other European powers were like, oh man, the Brits are going to do that, They're going to take over the entire continent. We better get there as soon as possible.

Yeah, And then, like you mentioned, the nineteenth nineteen sixties was when a lot of this started unwinding itself. And Zanzibar was one of them under British control until ten of December nineteen sixty three, and then they became a fully sovereign state and a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. So good for them.

Yeah, and the sovereign state thing only lasted a short time because very quickly they merged with we kept saying what's now Tanzania At the time it was Tanganyika, and they merged with Zanzibar into Tanzania. Isn't that right?

It's super neat.

It's a great amalgamation of names.

Yeah. I love it. And just learning more and more about African history is something I did not learn much growing up. It has been a cool part of the show and I can't wait to learn more.

Agreed. I think short Stuff is out.

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