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How much can happen in 38 minutes? In the first Star Wars movie, Luke hadn’t even gotten off Tatooine yet. But in 1896 there was a war between the UK and the Zanzibar Sultanate that began at 9:02 a.m. on August 27, and ended the same day at 9:40 a.m.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 27, 1896--
Today, Zanzibar is an archipelago of several small islands off the coast of Tanzania. A century ago, however, it included a sizeable portion of the East African coastline. From 1890 to 1963 it was a British Protectorate, which is a nice way of the UK saying to local government that you can run your own show, but don’t forget that we’re the ones in charge and we’re going to leave a big military presence here to remind you.
Six years after becoming a protectorate, on August 25, the pro-British Sultan Hamid bin Thuwaini died and there was a new sultan named Khalid bin Barghash. But the Brits didn’t want Khalid, because he wasn’t one to be a lackey to their suzerainty. The British wanted Hamad bin Muhammed, a good little kiss-ass.
The Brits said hey we had a deal you can’t name a new sultan without our permission, so stand down, motherfucker. Khalid said eat a dik-dik dick, and barricaded himself in his palace with his imperial guard. There was an ultimatum given by the Brits, and it expired at 9:00 a.m., so two minutes later they said okay fuck this guy, and they bombed that mofo.
The British forces were outnumbered, but they had these things called gunships that allowed them to hang back and lob explodey death toward the Sultan and his forces. It didn’t help the defenders that the palace was made of wood. Not long after the first shot Sultan Khalid said fuck this and noped out while saying to everyone else hey stay behind and keep fighting for me, k?
For some reason, the sultan’s royal yacht decided to enter the naval fray by shooting at the British, and when they finished laughing at the sheer audacity they blew the shit of it and it sank. About 500 of those on the side of Khalid were either killed or wounded, mostly from the palace catching fire. On the other side, a single British sailor was wounded. The war was declared over when the British ended the bombardment, having fired about 500 shells.
Khalid fled to the German consulate and said please don’t let them kill me. They said okay and refused to surrender him to the British, quoting an extradition treaty they had with Britain that said they didn’t have to hand over political prisoners. Khalid was smuggled to German East Africa and spent the next 20 years there. The Brits put Hamad in power and tightened their grip in the region. The British also made Khalid’s supporters pay reparations for the cost of the shells they’d fired at them.
The Anglo-Zanzibar War holds the record for the shortest war in history.
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