The Netherlands and the tiny Isles of Scilly were technically at war for 335 years — no shots fired, no one noticed, until a historian wrote a letter in 1986.
In 1651, a Dutch admiral sailed to the Isles of Scilly — a tiny archipelago off England's southwest tip — and reportedly declared war on behalf of the Netherlands. The cause: Royalist privateers based there had been raiding Dutch merchant ships during the English Civil War, and the admiral wanted reparations.
The Dutch never received satisfaction. After Parliamentarian forces conquered Scilly a few months later, the Dutch quietly withdrew — but no one ever signed a formal peace treaty with the island. The war was simply... forgotten.
For 335 years, the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly technically remained at war. No battles were fought. No one was killed. Most people on both sides had no idea the conflict existed at all.
In 1985, Roy Duncan, a local historian on Scilly, stumbled across the strange historical footnote and wrote to the Dutch Embassy in London. The embassy was delighted. A Dutch ambassador traveled to the islands, and on April 17, 1986, peace was formally — and joyfully — declared.
The Dutch ambassador quipped that it 'must have been frightening for the Scillonians to know we could have attacked at any moment.' Historians debate whether a real state of war ever legally existed, calling it partly a tourist board publicity coup — but the peace ceremony itself was completely genuine.
The episode raises fascinating questions about what a 'war' actually requires. Without an official declaration, without battles, without anyone even knowing — can a war exist? The Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Years' War suggests that sometimes history's most absurd footnotes are also its most philosophically interesting.