Africa

It lasted barely forty minutes, but it brought slavery to an end in the little island territory.

The Anglo-Zanzibar War on the 27th of August 1896 is the shortest in British history, but to the people of Zanzibar it meant everything.

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General Gordon’s death was a sensation and a scandal in its day.

In 1884, General Charles Gordon was sent to the Sudan, then under British control, to deal with a revolt by Muhammad Ahmad, who claimed to be a figure of Islamic prophecy, the ‘Mahdi’. Gordon found himself cut off in Khartoum, and the events that followed forced Prime Minister William Gladstone to resign.

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