History of Zanzibar led to the Anglo-Zanzibar War, also known as the shortest war in history. The islands gained independence from Britain in December 1963 as a constitutional monarchy. A month later, the bloody Zanzibar Revolution, in which several thousand Arabs and Indians were killed and thousands more expelled and expropriated, led to the Republic of Zanzibar and Pemba. That April, the republic merged with the mainland Tanganyika, or more accurately, was subsumed into Tanzania, of which Zanzibar remains a semi-autonomous region. Zanzibar was most recently in the international news with a January 2001 massacre, following contested elections. Zanzibar has been inhabited, perhaps
West of Zanzibar (1954 film) never tried." Steel recorded the song anyway and it was a success on the charts. Kenya's film censors banned the film on the grounds it would hurt race relations in the country. The movie was also banned in India after the protests of African students in that country. In 1957, the film was listed as among the seventeen most popular movies the Rank Organisation ever released in the US. West of Zanzibar (1954 film) West of Zanzibar is a 1954 British adventure film directed by Harry Watt and starring Anthony Steel, Sheila Sim and Edric Connor. It is a sequel