Dan Snow's History Hit - The Shortest War in History

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

On 27 August 1896, the British Empire went to war with the Zanzibar Sultanate for approximately 38 minutes! It is the shortest war in history. It came about after the death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini and his replacement by Sultan Khalid bin Barghash who favoured German interests in the region. With the commencement of hostilities, British warships bombarded the Sultan's palace cause extensive damage and over 500 casualties. Despite its brevity, the conflict is important as it marked the beginning of a major shift in the power dynamic between the industrialized West and the soon to be colonized world. To set the Anglo-Zanzibar war in its proper context Dan is joined by Dr Erik Gilbert from Arkansas State University. Erik explains what happened in those fateful minutes at the end of the nineteenth century, the importance of technology in the conflict and how it signalled the start of the Scramble for Africa. 

Hey folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History. On the 27th of August, 1896, the shortest war in history took place. Now obviously this is a slightly imperfect designation, but we think it's the shortest declared war between two kind of nation-states, sovereign entities in history. It was between Britain, the British Empire, at its apogee, and the state of Zanzibar, a small island off the east coast of Africa. The death of a pro-British sultan precipitated a crisis of succession. Britain's preferred candidate to the throne was not made sultan. Instead, Khalid bin Barghash became sultan, who seemed to be more favourable to the Germans, who were also increasing their presence in East Africa. As a result, the British sent in the gunboats.

They opened fire on the royal palace at 9am. High explosive shells fell around the palace, smashing it up. The sultan fled, and by 9.46, the firing stopped. So it lasted around 45 minutes, the shortest recorded war in history. So we thought we'd mark that conflict today on the podcast. And we ought to ask, obviously, why was there a flare-up of violence in Zanzibar in the late 19th century? But it was a good chance also to talk about the mismatch that opened up between British, European and African powers at this point, thanks to the technological transformation that was sweeping the world, and also about the scramble

for Africa. It pitted European powers against each other as they carved up the continent and subsumed once powerful entities like the Zanzibar Sultanate with such ease. It's such a fascinating topic and I had Dr Eric Gilbert talk to me about it. He is a professor of history at Arkansas State University. He is an expert in the Indian Ocean, which actually everybody is the most important ocean in history. We'll do another podcast on this one day. But it's really the ocean where everything happens. You don't have to take it from me for today,

but maybe I'll talk to Eric again. We'll discuss the importance of the Indian Ocean, the history of the human race. In fact, that would make a good TV documentary, History at TV, wouldn't it? With me just travelling around in feluccas, in junks, in 17th century Portuguese men of war, just cruising around the Indian Ocean.

You know what? I could get into that. But in order to watch that, you're going to have to subscribe to History Hit TV. It's our digital history channel. It's been nominated for Best Specialist Channel here in the UK. It's accessible all over the world. You just go to historyhit.tv. That's the website, historyhit.tv. For a very small subscription, you get access every single month to unlimited history documentaries and unlimited podcasts without the ads. So head over to historyhit.tv after you've listened to this podcast.

But in the meantime, here is the excellent Dr. Eric Gilbert talking about the shortest war in history. Enjoy. Eric, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. So we call it the shortest war in history. Give us the background. What is going on in East Africa at this point in history? Okay, so the events in question take place in 1896, after there's been an unexpected shift in who's taken the Sultanate in Zanzibar. And what results is a very brief event that gets described as a war, but it's a little fuzzy as to whether this

is a war in a conventional sense. But that very brief military conflict between a fleet of British cruisers and gunboats in the Zanzibar harbor and a bunch of Sultan Khalid's retainers and slaves and whatnot, and four rusty old cannons in Zanzibar town is, in a way, the culmination of a broader process that's been going on in the 19th century in Zanzibar. And Britain had been slowly chipping away at Zanzibar's independence and sovereignty over the course of the 19th century, without necessarily a plan to do that or anything like that. But it's just sort of a broader process that takes place in the 19th century. Eric, can I ask, when you say Zanzibar, today we think of Zanzibar as a very, very small island

off the coast of Tanzania. When you talk about Zanzibar, what are we talking about in terms of its reach along the coast or into the interior of the mainland? Well, Zanzibar remains a small island off the coast of what's now Tanzania, close enough that on a clear day, you can see the mainland.

So it's quite close. It's about 20 miles long, about 20 miles wide. So it's quite small. But it became in the 19th century, the seat of Omani Arab Empire in East Africa that controlled most of the coast from about Mogadishu down to Kilwa in southern Tanzania. So from Somalia to southern Tanzania, and then had a kind of amorphous control over the interior all the way to the lakes. I don't think anybody would say the Zanzibaris governed the space between the coast and the lakes, but they sent lots of trade missions and there's a lot of Zanzibari activity and caravan trade in the interior. The 19th century expression of that was, they say, when the flute plays in Zanzibar, they dance in the interior. The 19th century expression of that was, they say, when the flute plays in Zanzibar, they dance on the lakes. I think that's more of an economic flute than a political flute, but there's a great deal of influence that kind of wanes the further

you get from the coast. Zanzibar is often presented in tourism literature and things like that as this ancient Swahili town that you're going back in time when you come to Zanzibar. But it's really a kind of a 19th century boom town. In most respects, you know, Boston and Philadelphia are much older cities than Zanzibar. And Zanzibar had existed prior to the 19th century, but it really only becomes the Zanzibar we know when an Omani sultan, an Omani Arab, realizes that there's real potential on the East African coast. And Sayyid Saeed, Abu Sayyid, the ruler of Muscat and Oman, moves his throne to Zanzibar because that's where the money is. Zanzibar is where slave trade, ivory trade routes converge on the coast.

They pass through Zanzibar to get out to the rest of the world. And so he moves there. And pretty quickly, Zanzibar becomes more economically important to him than Oman and Muscat are. So you end up with a sort of Zanzibari tail wagging the Omani dog. And it grows very rapidly in the 19th century based on its position in the slave trade and ivory trade and so forth. It draws people from all over the world. One of the first American consulates is in Zanzibar in the 1820s. There are merchants from Germany, the UK, there are British Indians, there are Arabs, there are Baluchis, there are a few Chinese. Everybody is there because there's so much sort of wealth to be made there, money to be made. So it's thriving. Most of the built environment of

old Zanzibar town that we think of as old ancient Zanzibar town is all 19th and early 20th century construction during this period where there's just money flying around all over the place. So a lot of wealthy Omanis relocate there. Britain becomes deeply interested in what's going on there, partly because the East India Company is interested in everything going on in the Western Indian Ocean and has a Trucial Oman and places like that are something that they've been engaged with. These are much the same cast of characters relocated to East Africa. And so in part because of the presence of large numbers of Indians who are British subjects in Zanzibar, the British argue are British subjects. There's some debate as to

whether legally they were really British subjects or not. But because there are large numbers of British subjects in Zanzibar, British consuls feel that they have an obligation to look after those British subjects and also to try to tamp down and eliminate the slave trade that passes through Zanzibar and also fuels the Zanzibar clove plantation economy. Zanzibar had become in the 19th century the world's largest producer of cloves, a crop originally associated with Southeast Asia, never grown anywhere before. But Sayyid Saeed, the sort of pioneering sultan of Zanzibar, manages to get a strain of cloves that will grow in East Africa and builds up this sort of pioneering sultan of Zanzibar, manages to get a strain of cloves that will grow in East Africa and builds up this sort of alternative to the trade economy, the long distance trade in slaves and ivory by sharing out land to be used for clove plantations. Those clove plantations

use lots of slaves. British empires opposed to that by the 1840s or so. And so they began a process of constraining what's going on in Zanzibar in terms of trade and then trying to keep British subjects, mostly Indians, out of the slave trade. There's a steady buildup of British military presence on the anti-slave trade patrol in Zanzibar. It's a fantastic natural harbor. So it's a good place to base patrol vessels and things like this. Originally run by the East India Company, but then later by the Foreign Office after the East India Company goes out of business. But there's always been a connection between Zanzibar and India and British India in particular. And that first real expression, I guess, of British political power in Zanzibar comes when the first sultan dies. Sayyid Saeed dies in 1856.

And the East India Company, in one of the last things it does, they separate the thrones in Zanzibar and Muscat. Not because the Zanzibaris wanted it, but because the East India Company thought it made sense to separate those two. So that's, I think, a sign of what's going on. You can see that this increased engagement. That process continues till about 1890, main line. And Ali is faced with a situation where he realizes he's either going to be a German colony or protectorate or a British protectorate, and he chooses the British protectorate option. So by 1890, the Zanzibaris are a formal protectorate as opposed to just sort of an informal protectorate like they had been before 1890. One of the provisions of that deal was that

when there's a question of succession to the Sultanate, that the British have veto power over who comes into that role. So when the next Sultan, Hamad, dies in 1896, possibly poisoned by Khalid bin Barghash, and Khalid claims the throne. He's not the candidate that the British had preferred. He's a little too independent-minded for their tastes. And so he's violated the terms of the protection agreement. And they see this as something where they have to intervene. Three days after he claims the throne, they intervene. There are five warships, claims the throne, they intervene. There are five warships, three cruisers and two gunboats in the harbor, sort of a mixed force of Marines and some Zanzibari infantry that had remained loyal to Lloyd Matthews, who was the British appointed first secretary in Zanzibar, end up

taking action against Khalid and his household retainers and so forth, who try to take control of the palace and to defend the palace. Probably about 2,000 of Khalid's people faced off against about 1,000 of Lloyd Matthews and the other British forces. This is a grossly mismatched fight. The cruisers in the harbor are partially armored. They're equipped with rifled artillery. The British soldiers and their Zanzibari allies are equipped with breech-loading rifles and so forth. By contrast, the Zanzibaris, Hollywood's Zanzibaris, have muzzle-loading cannons, at least one of which probably dates back to the 17th century. at least one of which probably dates back to the 17th century. And I would guess flintlocks.

And basically, the cruisers sit in the harbor, drop gunfire on this crowd of people. They also attack the Sultan's yacht, the Glasgow, and sink it. It's like the 19th century equivalent of a drone strike. You know, you make your point with almost no risk to yourself. I mean, I'm sure nobody on the cruisers was in any grave danger. There was one British petty officer who was wounded. By contrast to 500 casualties on the Zanzibari side, a mixture of wounded and killed. But Khalid is able to escape to the German consulate and they spirit him over to the German controlled mainland. It's ambiguous, I think, what Khalid thought was going to happen. I don't know what Khalid was thinking. I don't think anybody does, how he thought he was going to get away with this. I don't think there's any reasonable expectation

that his forces were going to stand up to all of this. But certainly after this event, nobody bothers trying again. This is a real signal, I think, of the shift in the balance of power, military and political to stop the slave trade, Said says, well, I want to get around to it or something like that. The technology would have been there and the money and whatnot would have been there to defeat the Muscat empire in East Africa. But it would have been a lot more costly, right? It would have been muzzleloading cannons against muzzleloading cannons, flintlocks against flintlocks. It would have required a much bigger investment on the part of the British to get the same results in the early 19th century. So in the early 19th century, they're maneuvering, right? There's carrots and sticks, and it's diplomacy with the threat of force behind it. By the 1890s, that calculus has shifted dramatically to the

point where you can sit on a cruiser and sip a hot beverage while dropping explosives into the ends of our town. So I think one of the things that happens in the 19th century is there's this dramatic shift in the balance of power between colonizers and the about to be colonized. And this is sometimes treated as kind of a novelty war. That's the shortest war in history. But it's also, I think, kind of a canary in the coal mine and foreshadows, I think, a much larger, gorier event at Omdurman, which is usually seen as the archetypical demonstration of the power of colonial armies over their opponents. But Zanzibar is two years earlier, smaller scale, but I think it sends the same message. You see the same pattern in Zanzibar.

If you listen to Dan Sturz History, we're talking about the shortest war ever fought. More after this. Hello. If you're enjoying this podcast, then I know you're going to be fascinated by the new episodes of the History Hit Warfare podcast.

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and drop high explosive shells on it. What turns that into formal imposition of imperial control, for example, during this war? Is that that they just can now? The tech's available? It's like, hey, we can do this. Is there an imperial drive at home? Is it the fact that other European competitors are emerging and you have to swap formal control of some of East Africa for an informal oversight of all of East Africa? What's going on? saying here, it's always easier to fatten two hogs than just one hog. And that if you have just one hog and you put food in front of it, he'll only eat until he stops being hungry. If you have two,

they'll compete with each other because they're afraid the other hog is going to get a little bit more. And so they end up eating more and you can fatten them fast. So I think a lot of it is certainly the dynamic between the French and the British works this way. But I think the dynamic between the French and the Germans works this way a but I think the dynamic between the French and the Germans works this way a little bit, is nobody wants to be sort of caught out by the other guy getting some of the territory you were after. The Germans are seizing territory on the coast because some Germans seem to think it would be a good idea. It's very hard to make a good economic case, I think, for why Germany wanted a big chunk of East Africa. I think in the case of Zanzibar, from a British perspective, it's a more appealing place than it would be for the Germans. It's not

too far from India. It's a potential coaling station on the way from the Cape on your way. It's a classic. It's a classic British. It's an offshore island. They love that. It's a Singapore. It's Aden disconnected from the land. It's a Bombay Aden. Yeah. And the other thing is, I think it's one of these sort of gradual processes. The exact same thing arguably happened in Gold Coast stroke Ghana. You just have this history in the place that moves from one step to the next step to the other. And you just there's been a British consul in Zanzibar since the 1830s. So they're so invested and engaged in the place. There's, I think, a natural outgrowth from the slave trade patrols that were run out

of Zanzibar. It's just sort of been part of the chasse gardée of the British Empire for a long time. And undeniably, there is money there. It was, in its time, kind of a Dubai. It's fallen on hard times since then. In the 19th and early 20th century, everybody was trying to leave the Persian Gulf and get to Zanzibar. Now everybody's trying to get out of Zanzibar and go to the Persian Gulf, where the money has shifted dramatically.

But there's a huge inflow of impoverished Arabs into Zanzibar in the 20s and 30s in the late part of the 19th century, because it's so prosperous compared to the Persian Gulf. There are droughts going on in Oman and places like that, and people are desperate to get out, and Zanzibar is where they go. Zanzibar and East Africa in general were touted by officials in India as like America for Indians, a place that they encouraged Indian immigration because they saw it as an opportunity for Indians, but also they thought that Indians would uplift, serve as an example to Africans about how to engage in commerce. And they saw the Indians as a modernizing influence. So I think there are a lot of kind of minor pushes rather than one big cause.

But I think above all, it's just gotten so cheap in terms of the blood and treasure angle. It really isn't that much trouble to seize these places. Whereas if you look at the French in Algeria in the early part of the 19th century, that was a really hard fought, bloody campaign. But that was before 1850 and before all of these technological advances that put European military technology big steps ahead of everybody else's military technology. Omdurman is the classic example of that. Well, I was going to say, because Omdurman advancing into Sudan, even a generation before, was almost suicidally dangerous for a European

force. And yet Kitchener does it in 1898, I guess, with the same things you're talking about, steamboats armed with repeating super accurate long range weapons. And it becomes... Why not? It makes a huge difference so that they aren't dropping dead from malaria. In Kitchener's case, telegraph communication, he's leaving a telegraph wire down the Nile. So he's in constant communication with home and he can get orders. They could also get news reports out of Omdurman. communication with home and he can get orders. They could also get news reports out of Omdurman. So Omdurman was reported in sort of real time because of the cable. But a guy named Daniel Hedrick has identified 1850 as a pivot point in the 19th century balance of power for imperialism

and repeating rifles, steamships, telegraph, Y-9, and teleraph isn't totally at work in Zanzibar, but the other three are rifled artillery. Those sorts of weapons on a steam-powered platform put you in a really different sort of situation. And those are technologies that require such a complex, you need machine tools, you need iron foundries, you need all these other things to put those together that they're really hard to replicate. And so it's very difficult for people like the Zanzibaris who are in many respects really engaged with modern stuff. We tend to think of Zanzibar as this timeless place that's outside of time in some ways, but particularly Sultan Barghash, he built an ice factory. He electrified the city. He built the

first building in sub-Saharan Africa with an elevator. They built a railway. They're bringing in non-native cash crops and indigenizing them. All the sorts of things that 20th century colonialists will do by setting up botanical gardens and moving crops around within the empire. Bargash and Said are doing all of that stuff in the 19th century. So it's not like these guys have their heads in the sand and are rejecting modernity. As anxious as they are to embrace modernity, they can't do it fast enough to keep up with what the Industrial Revolution is doing to Europe and what that's providing Europeans with.

And we should say railways also play a part in the invasion of Sudan. Again, incredibly one-sided battle at Omdurman. My great-grandpa was there. Oh, really? As a subaltern. He left one of the significant reports of the battle. And it's a massacre. Yes.

Something on the order of 20,000 Sudanese killed and I think six people in the Anglo-Egyptian force, most of whom were heat casualties, I think, rather than combat casualties. My parents lived in Khartoum in the 90s, and I was able to visit Khartoum at the time. And I went to Omdurman, but most of Omdurman is now just a giant suburb, so it's kind of lost. Well, Eric, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this short episode, but important illustrative episode in the wider scramble for Africa. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you.

I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it to the end of this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast. I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done.

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