The True Story About Britain’s Little Known War

Wars are long drawn out conflicts that cost thousands of lives, usually.

Did you know that Great Britain was once at war with Zanzibar for just 38 minutes?

An 1890 treaty between Britain & Germany divided up East Africa and Zanzibar was under British control.

A puppet Sultan was put in charge, but after he mysteriously died in 1896 Khalid bin Barghash, his cousin who is was widely believed to have had poisoned him seized power - without British approval.

This did not go down well and the Chief Diplomat Basil Cave advised Khalid to stand down immediately. This was ignored and in fact, the new Sultan started gathering his forces and arming the Palace - which funnily enough included several heavy artillery guns which were given to the previous Sultan as gifts from the British.

In total, he had getting on for 3,000 men ready for action. Cave, also set about gathering his forces with already two warships harboured and back up requested with a third arriving quickly.

Forces landed in the town to protect the British Consulate and prevent the locals from rioting.

However having a large force and being able to use it are two very different things, Cave knew he did not have permission to open any hostilities.

He sent a telegram to London asking “Are we authorised in the event of all attempts at a peaceful solution proving useless, to fire on the Palace from the men-of-war?”

Ultimatums were given and ignored and two more warships arrived.

Finally, the response came “You are authorised to adopt whatever measures you may consider necessary, and will be supported in your action by Her Majesty’s Government. Do not, however, attempt to take any action which you are not certain of being able to accomplish successfully.”

On the 26th of August Cave told Khalid that he was to take down his flag and leave the Palace by 9 am or they would open fire.

The response came at 8 am just an hour before the deadline, Khalid said they had no intention of hauling down the flags and did not believe the British wanted to fire upon them.

Cave replied, “unless you do as you are told, we shall certainly do so.”

At 9.00 on the 27th of August the bombardment started, at 9.02 it is believed that the Sultan escaped the Palace leaving his forces behind to defend it. With over 500 dead, the artillery destroyed and the wooden Palace about to collapse the flag was taken down at 9.38 and the shortest war in history was over - I am pretty sure that my brother and I used to have longer battles with our toy soldiers and a tennis ball!

There is a film documentary about the war which rather annoyingly runs for 31 minutes, I mean how difficult would it have been to eek it out for another seven so it lasted the same length as the War?