June 18, 2025 • 11 mins
How long was the shortest war in human history? Under an hour. Hard to believe? Not when you hear the story.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's right, another day rue special for the Shorty. So
thanks Dave for this.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
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?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I didn't mention the date.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
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
(01:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I thought it was important because of the great Billy
Joel song Zanzibar for real.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Billy joelded a record on that.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Hey, there's a song called Zanzibar. Good song, but I
think it's it's about a bar named Zanzibar.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Oh, Okay, that's a good name for a bar. Yeah,
I like it.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I'll be what's the next line?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Then that's the course. Then it goes into the next verse.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
See, I still never watch that stuff. I missed out.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
They were great, man, I know you were stuck with
the big ones.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, So where do we leave. It was a busy
trading port. Did you mention everything they were trading yet?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
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,
(02:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
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
(03:31):
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
(03:56):
up until I guess about the sixties. I think the
Scramble for Africa deserves its own episode.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
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.
(04:24):
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
(04:45):
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
(05:06):
killing either his uncle or Cousinyane. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
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
(05:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
All right.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
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
(06:30):
here to see what you do.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
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.
(06:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
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
(07:33):
you're told, we shall certainly do. So.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
You sound like again, every time you do a British accent,
you sound like tankas area and mystery man.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh I love it.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
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?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
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
(09:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
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?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
It's super neat.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It's a great amalgamation of names.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Agreed. I think short Stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
That's right, another day rue special for the Shorty. So
thanks Dave for this.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah. Thanks.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
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?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I didn't mention the date.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
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
(01:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
I thought it was important because of the great Billy
Joel song Zanzibar for real.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Billy joelded a record on that.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Hey, there's a song called Zanzibar. Good song, but I
think it's it's about a bar named Zanzibar.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Oh, Okay, that's a good name for a bar. Yeah,
I like it.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
I'll be what's the next line?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Then that's the course. Then it goes into the next verse.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
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.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
See, I still never watch that stuff. I missed out.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
They were great, man, I know you were stuck with
the big ones.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, So where do we leave. It was a busy
trading port. Did you mention everything they were trading yet?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
No?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
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,
(02:54):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
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
(03:31):
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
(03:56):
up until I guess about the sixties. I think the
Scramble for Africa deserves its own episode.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
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.
(04:24):
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
(04:45):
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
(05:06):
killing either his uncle or Cousinyane. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
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
(05:32):
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.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
All right.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
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
(06:30):
here to see what you do.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
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.
(06:52):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
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
(07:33):
you're told, we shall certainly do. So.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
You sound like again, every time you do a British accent,
you sound like tankas area and mystery man.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Oh I love it.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
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.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
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?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
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
(09:58):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
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?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
It's super neat.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
It's a great amalgamation of names.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
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.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Agreed. I think short Stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Stuff you should know is production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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