The Exploration of the Aden Protectorate

Abstract

N I839 Aden was captured, and with its capture began the contact with its hinterland that has resulted in the gradual growth of the collection of sultanates and sheikhdoms in the British sphere of southern Arabia now known as the Aden Protectorate. Aden itself, advanced to the status of a colony in I937, occupies some 75 square miles; the Protectorate has an area estimated at about I 12,000 square miles, but its boundaries are not all demarcated. In the interior it is bounded, roughly, on the west and the north by the Kingdom of Yemen and the Great Desert respectively and on the east by the Qara country, which is part of the dominions of His Highness the Sultan of Muscat and Oman. It also includes the island of Soqotra. The Hadhramaut lies in the eastern part of the Protectorate, between the Wahidi and 'Aulaqi countries on the west and the Mahra country on the east. On the north it reaches to the Empty Quarter. It is a curious fact that most of this vast territory came under British protection without the penetration and exploration that usually precede the establishment of Western influence in a primitive country. Hogarth remarks' that Aden, which might have supplied an invaluable base for the inland, remained practically without influence in the matter for about a generation, except in so far as concerned its immediate vicinity, the district of Lahej. This is true; and although the Turkish reconquest of the Yemen in 1872 no doubt made it easier for explorers to penetrate the hinterland, it was largely owing to the patient labors of Haines, the first Resident of Aden, and some of his successors that the Arab of South Arabia has gradually come to look on the British not as infidels but as friends. Haines' relations with the tribes around Aden were directed toward assuring the safety of Aden itself and in due course developed into the conclusion of treaties that provided, among other things, for the extension of British protection to the tribes concerned and that included an engagement on the part of the tribes not to cede their territories to foreign powers.