ABSTRACT

Aden and the Protectorates do not fit at all neatly into the twentieth century history of the British Empire. Much of southwest Arabia had only a brief brush with British authority and this telescoping of the imperial experience lends the history of the region some of its uniqueness. During the 1950s the British Empire was on the retreat in Africa and east Asia but in this region it was engaged in a process of expansion. This interventionist policy was evident in the Protectorates where the British attempted to transform the minimally governed principalities of the region into a federal state. In contrast to the fleeting contact with western imperialism experienced by many of the inhabitants of the interior, the citizens of Aden had been subject to British or, more properly, Anglo-Indian control since Captain Stafford Haines seized control of the town from the Sultan of Lahj in January 1839. During the century which followed this successful military action Aden remained a backwater of empire. In tracing the development of British policy across this first century it is noticeable that, despite an apparent lack of enthusiasm for widening their sphere of control, the British displayed a determination not to relinquish what they held when either local or regional actors challenged their presence. Years of neglect were often followed by a flurry of activity when other actors impinged into the region and threatened to damage British prestige. The conflict with Nasser’s Egypt in the 1950s and 1960s was the last and most explosive instance of this tendency.