How petty can people be? Apparently...petty enough to go to war. This week's shortcide episode, Chelsea unpacks The Pastry War, where a French baker's complaint escalated into an international conflict, while Bailey explores The War of Jenkins' Ear, proving that one severed ear became the perfect excuse for two empires already itching to fight.

From unpaid pastries to missing body parts, we're diving into two of history's most absurdly named wars to uncover the far more complicated stories hiding beneath the headlines. Because as it turns out, wars are rarely started by pastries or ears—but human pride, greed, and pettiness have a remarkable way of turning the smallest incidents into international disasters.

References:

The Pastry War

Anna, T. E. (1978). The fall of the royal government in Mexico City. University of Nebraska Press.

Costeloe, M. P. (1993). The Central Republic in Mexico, 1835–1846: Hombres de bien in the age of Santa Anna. Cambridge University Press.

Fowler, W. (2007). Santa Anna of Mexico. University of Nebraska Press.

Hamnett, B. R. (1999). A concise history of Mexico (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Meyer, M. C., Sherman, W. L., & Deeds, S. M. (2014). The course of Mexican history (10th ed.). Oxford University Press.

Vázquez, J. Z. (1997). The Mexican wars for independence. Hackett Publishing.

The War of Jenkins' Ear

Harding, R. (1991). Amphibious warfare in the eighteenth century: The British expedition to the West Indies, 1740–1742. Boydell Press.

Harlow, V. T. (1926). The founding of the second British Empire, 1763–1793 (Vol. 1). Longmans, Green and Co.

Rodger, N. A. M. (2004). The command of the ocean: A naval history of Britain, 1649–1815. W. W. Norton & Company.

Simms, B. (2008). Three victories and a defeat: The rise and fall of the first British Empire. Basic Books.

Woodfine, P. (1998). Britannia's glories: The Walpole ministry and the 1739 war with Spain. Boydell Press.

Additional Historical References

Black, J. (2001). European international relations, 1648–1815. Palgrave Macmillan.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). War of Jenkins' Ear. https://www.britannica.com/event/War-of-Jenkins-Ear

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Pastry War. https://www.britannica.com/event/Pastry-War

National Maritime Museum. (n.d.). The War of Jenkins' Ear. https://www.rmg.co.uk

Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). The Pastry War. https://history.state.gov

Oxford Reference. (n.d.). Pastry War. Oxford University Press.