Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Shortest War

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

How long was the shortest war in human history? Under an hour. Hard to believe? Not when you hear the story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And appropriately in this short stuff, we're gonna talk about the world's shortest war. That's right. Another Dave Rue special for the shorty. So thanks, Dave, for this. Yeah, thanks. This is about the Anglo-Zanzibar 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 38 minutes online when you look this thing up maybe as high as 45. Yeah but everyone agrees it was less than an hour this war. That's right. So Anglo-Zanzibar means that it was between England and Zanzibar appropriately enough. It happened did you say in 1896? I did notar appropriately enough. It happened, did you say in 1896? I did not mention the date.

It happened in 1896 and it was between the British Royal Navy and the Sultan of Zanzibar. And you might say like, what's the deal here? Zanzibar is off the coast of Tanzania today. Why would the British Navy care about this? Well, back in the 1890s and before that, Zanzibar was a very important and very wealthy trading port 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 Joel did a record on that? There's a song called Zanzibar, good song. But I think it's about a bar named Zanzibar. Oh, okay. That's a good name for a bar. Yeah, I like it. I just figured I'd 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 car. I got a jazz guitar.

I got a tab at Zanzibar. Tonight, that's where I'll be. I'll be. What's the next line? Uh, then that's the chorus then it goes into the next verse. Okay. When I hear Zanzibar, I think of the G.I. Joe and it goes into the next verse. Okay. When I hear Zanzibar, I think of the GI Joe dreadnoughts. They were in league with Cobra,

and they were either from Zanzibar or one of them was named Zanzibar. Oh, 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 did 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 30,000 enslaved people were shipped out through Zanzibar all the

way up through the 1880s, 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 wanted to have 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 1890, came up with a treaty between the British and the Germans,

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 60s. I think the scramble for Africa deserves its own episode someday.

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, they're self-ruling and stuff like that. So it's not quite colony, it's colony-lite. 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 bin Tawaini. And he was basically a puppet. He was the fifth sultan of Zanzibar, and this was in 1893. But he was not around long because Dave says here was his nephew. I also saw cousin, this guy Khalid Bin Bargash, who had already had one failed run at the Sultan ship, I guess, is that what it would be called, or Sultan-y?

And then tried again by almost certainly poisoning and killing either his uncle or cousin. Thuweini. Yeah. Yeah, and one reason that he's a suspect is right when Thuene died Ben Bargash showed up in the palace and was like I'm Sultan now everybody. Yeah, I wanted to let you know so if you you mentioned that Thuene's

sultancy lasted only three years Bargash'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. Okay.

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here to see what you do. That's pretty nice. At 9 a.m. you we'll just be waiting here to see what you do. That's pretty nice. At 9 a.m. you can get up early, you could exercise, eat breakfast. You have plenty of time. Yeah. So Bargash was like, I don't think you're gonna do that. He decided he was gonna call the British's bluff

that 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 defenders. I saw 1000. I'm not 100% certain, but there were a bunch of Zanzibari defenders around the palace by 8 a.m. on the day that Bargash 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, in 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. Very nice. You sound like, again, every time you do a British accent, you sound like Hank Azaria in Mystery Men. Oh, I love it. I'll take it every time. The Blue Raja. Yeah.

So 9 a.m. 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 38 minutes by most accounts is how long that took to completely just, I don't think they destroyed the palace, but they put a hurting on it. Two minutes into this,

Bargash 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, 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 interesting to talk about now, but 500 Zanzibaris lost their lives. Yeah. In less than an hour. Yeah, I think they just rained down artillery on them and like 500 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, probably. 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 the first time 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 dude, these guys will mess you up. They're not, they're not messing around. 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 are 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. the 1960s was when a lot of this started unwinding itself and Zanzibar was one of them under British control until 10 of December 1963.

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 neat? That's super neat.

It's a great amalgamation of names. Yeah, I love it. And just learning more and more about African history, something I did not learn much growing up, 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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