ABSTRACT
The styptic nature of the electoral franchise in Aden colony served to alienate the burgeoning community of immigrant workers from the Federal hinterland and Yemen from the very structures the British hoped would secure the future stability of the Federation of South Arabia (FSA). The spectre of Iranian ambition and intent looms large in this episode of state creation but even so, it is simplistic to suggest that external circumstance alone was primarily responsible for the establishment of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Sir Kennedy Trevaskis, the former High Commissioner in Aden, however saw little prospect of the UAE surviving, seeing stark parallels with the conditions that had led to the collapse of the FSA. Given the endemic rivalries that marked relations between many of the Arab Gulf rulers, it is therefore remarkable that on the eve of the British withdrawal from the Gulf in 1971, the Trucial states had indeed cohered themselves into a Federal structure, the UAE.
