The Worlds Longest War The worlds longest war, on the other hand, spanned 355 335 years without a single shot fired. That war, between the United Provinces of Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly, got started in 1651 and the story goes as follows: During the English Civil War (1642 - 1651), the Parliamentarians beat the Royalists further and further away from London, until it was forced to retreat to the Isles of Scilly off the Cornish coast. The Netherlands, which sided with the Parliamentarians, sent the Dutch Navy to fight the Royalist fleet. The Dutch Navy was so badly beaten that the Netherlands decided to declare war. However, they couldnt blame England, since it was the Royalists in Scilly that caused them so much problem - so they declared war on the Isles in 1651 instead. Later that year, the Isles of Scilly fell to the Parliamentarians and the Dutch forgot all about the war (that is, until they fought the Brits again and again in the Anglo-Dutch War, the first of which started just 1 year later!) In 1985, a local historian and Chairman of the Isles of Scilly Council Roy Duncan decided to look into the rumor that the Isles were still at war with the Netherlands. When the Dutch Embassy in London confirmed that there was an actual declaration of war and everything, Duncan invited the Dutch ambassador Jonkheer Huydecoper to Scilly to sign a peace treaty. The peace treaty was signed on April 17, 1986, thus officially ending the war between the Netherlands and Isles of Scilly 335 years after it was declared!
Posted on: Wed, 16 Jul 2014 19:26:06 +0000
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