Aden Protectorate Research Articles

Anthropologists, Topographers, Diplomats, and Spies: Royal Air Force Intelligence Officers in South Arabia 1954–1959

Recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have reawakened interest as well as controversies over how Western militaries tried to engage, with varying degrees of success, with the ‘Human Terrain’. These debates are far from new. This article explores the role played by a handful of Royal Air Force Intelligence Officers across the Aden Protectorates in the 1950s. Undoubtedly, they enjoyed notable success, not least in countering the immediate territorial avarice of Yemen and Saudi Arabia. But they remained agents of an empire in retreat, their effectiveness in harnessing a granular knowledge of the tribal landscape to the delivery of aerial violence being buffeted by an environment that they could not shape and over which, despite their best endeavours, Aden could exercise little control.

BRITAIN AND YEMEN: THE END OF BRITISH RULE IN SOUTH ARABIA THROUGH THE EYES OF A YOUNG POLITICAL OFFICER

This article publishes for the first time selections of the private correspondence (placing them in their historical context) of John G. T. Shipman (1939–2016), who took up his position as assistant adviser in the Eastern Aden Protectorate at the end of 1962 just as the first signs of political and social change were appearing in South Arabia. He served from this position in different parts of the Eastern Aden Protectorate until 1967. Shipman's correspondence allows for an unmediated appreciation of how people on the ground experienced the historical events at the time, including the British withdrawal in 1967, and highlights the extent of their own grasp of the goings-on when contrasted with the historical record. In this sense, the scope of this article is to allow the voice of one of the many British colonial officials to directly narrate their encounters during the last five years of British colonial rule over southern Arabia. The perceptive eye of a young political officer coupled with the ephemeral character of his handwritten correspondence, which providentially survived for more than five decades although it was never intended for publication, offers a fresh insight into the political and social life of the Eastern Aden Protectorate.

Aden and the Gulf: the reflections of a political officer

ABSTRACTThe author vividly records his impressions of life in the Western Aden Protectorate in the 1960s during the years leading up to the independence of the territory in 1967. As a political officer advising various Arab tribal leaders he describes how his responsibilities could range far wider than the provisions of the Advisory Treaties, and he offers personal conclusions about the collapse of British and Arab authority resulting, in his view, from a misguided attempt to turn tribal sheikhs into a coalition of Indian rulers, creating the shaky structure of a Federal government that collapsed in the face of rag-tag opposition from nationalist activists.

Imperial Eyes: Imperial Spies. British Travel and Espionage in Southern Arabia, 1891–1946

From the late nineteenth century, a number of British travellers ventured far from the comforts of the colony of Aden, that lone imperial seat in southern Arabia, into the unknown, neighbouring worlds of the Hadhramaut and Turkish Yemen. This article traces a number of those remarkable journeys and their aftermaths, to uncover that the relationships which these travellers held with the British government varied greatly. Some were actively encouraged to travel while others found rather less support from government officials. Archive material is employed to investigate a number of ventures made into Yemen and the Aden Protectorates by British travellers from the 1890s to 1940s and the value of certain travellers to Britain's imperial project in Arabia.

THE RAJ RECONSIDERED: BRITISH INDIA's INFORMAL EMPIRE AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCE IN ASIA AND AFRICA

This provides a detailed explanation of how the Indian Empire was organised and run. But its main purpose is to argue that the British Indian Empire was in fact much larger than historians of the Raj normally realise because the Empire should be taken to include the Gulf Arab states, Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan, the Aden Protectorate and the British Somaliland protectorate.

MAKING YEMEN INDIAN: REWRITING THE BOUNDARIES OF IMPERIAL ARABIA

This article argues that the Aden Protectorate constituted one of the westernmost parts of India in terms of its political–legal identity and its place in the cultural project of imperial India. Although the port of Aden was governed as part of the Bombay Presidency until 1937, the tribes of the Aden Protectorate were treated as independent native states similar to the princely states of India. Using the sultanate of Lahj as a case study, the article shows the extent to which the colonial state used the Indian model to elaborate a history of the sultanate as an independent political entity, a status that was then institutionalized in historical texts, ethnographic knowledge, and state rituals. The article concludes with an analysis of the protectorate's participation in the 1903 Coronation Durbar in Delhi as a means of demonstrating its place in the British imagination of a socially and politically fragmented India that extended beyond geographical South Asia.

Memories of Arabia and Empire: An Oral History of the British in Aden

The British ruled Aden in southern Arabia, together with the Western and Eastern Aden Protectorates, from 1839 to 1967. In the final years, an increasingly violent national liberation struggle forced an abrupt British withdrawal. Although some local people benefited from colonial rule, it was felt by many that the decolonisation process was unsatisfactory. By listening to the voices of a wide range of individuals, both British and Yemeni, who experienced the final years of British rule, the Aden oral history project shifts the focus from history's ‘grand narratives’ to the ‘smaller’, less familiar stories of enterprise, adventure and everyday survival.

Rulers and residents: British relations with the Aden protectorate, 1937–59

(1995). Rulers and residents: British relations with the Aden protectorate, 1937–59. Middle Eastern Studies: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 509-523.

The political imperatives of bureaucracy and empire: The case of the coloured alien seamen order, 1925

The Coloured Alien Seamen Order of 1925 is notorious for being the first attempt by a British government to restrict the employment of black workers. In reality, however, Arab seamen from the Yemen rather than black seamen in general were the prime target. This study argues that the policy of exclusion was initiated by officials of the Board of Trade and the Home Office in Cardiff and South Shields. In opposition were senior civil servants in the Foreign Office, the India Office and the Colonial Office who were at various times in the First World War and afterwards concerned with political stability in the Aden Protectorate. The exigencies of Empire were in this instance a powerful check on domestic racism.

The Zaydī tribes of the Yemen: a new field study

In a recent work, Paul Dresch gives us an admirable study, hard to praise too highly, well researched, engagingly written, with mercifully little of sociological jargon. His field contact and knowledge of the (Zaydī) tribes of the northern Yemeni Arab Republic is of the kind of experienced political officers in the former Aden Protectorates like the well-known late Major Ian Snell and ‘Johnny’ Johnson, to which he adds the ability to relate his findings to the Arabian cultural background. Dresch makes use of Arabic documents, printed or MS, and uses the valuable evidence of political verse that I do not recall seeing utilized by other writers on Yemeni society. It is a pleasure to see Arabic correctly vocalized and transliterated, not mangled and distorted. A glossary of the technical terms of tribal law would have been of great value to scholars— many of these are known but more than a few, special to the region, are not. (Can one hope to see these in a further publication?)

SEDIMENTARY HISTORY AND PALEOGEOGRAPHY OF LOWER AND MIDDLE JURASSIC ROCKS, CENTRAL SAUDI ARABIA

Eight clastic and carbonate lithofacies of Lower and Middle Jurassic age (the Marrat and Dhruma Formations respectively) have been identified. These lithofacies are mainly shales, shales‐and‐siltstones, siltstones‐and‐shales, sandstones, argillaceous limestones, calcarenitic limestones, calcarenites and dolomites. Intraclasts, pellets, oolites, gypsum, algae, and coral reefs were also found to be dominant among these lithofacies. Furthermore, these beds contained either restricted or diversifed biota, with a few sedimentary structures such as lamination, cross‐bedding and common bioturbation. Thus, it is presumed that the Lower and Middle Jurassic rocks in Central Saudi Arabia were deposited in very shallow (i.e. tidal flat and lagoon), shallow‐neritic, and deep‐marine conditions of the Tethys Sea.During Toarcian (Lower Jurassic) time, the Tethys Sea extended towards Arabia, forming an arcuate shoreline around the Pre‐Jurassic sediments. The greater part of the Arabian Peninsula was under very shallow marine (Tethys) water as is shown by the presence of tidal‐flat and lagoon deposits in northern Oman, Rub al‐Khali, parts of the Aden Protectorate and Yemen, central, eastern and NNW Saudi Arabia, the northern edge of Sinai, NW Jordan, Lebanon, central and northern Syria, and west, central and eastern Iraq and Iran (Fig. 5). On the other hand, east and north of this area, very shallow marine deposits overlaid the shallow‐neritic Tethys deposits.Further expansion of the Tethys Sea transgression occurred during Bajocian‐Bathonian (Middle Jurassic) time, when major parts of the Arabian Peninsula and its neighbouring regions were submerged below shallow‐neritic and deepmarine Tethys conditions (Fig. 6). During this time, shallow‐nentic Tethys conditions extended to include the Oman Mountains, as far west as western Rub al‐Khali, north to include Central Saudi Arabia, running through parts of its northern area and passing under the Saudi Arabia‐Iraq Neutral Zone and reaching SW Iraq, turning west to include part of the area of NW Arabia and reaching NW Jordan. Northern Oman, most of central Rub al‐Khali, eastern Saudi Arabia, western Iran, central and eastern Iraq, and eastern and northern Jordan, were covered by deepmarine Tethys waters (F&. 6). However, simultaneously, SW Arabia, Yemen and the Aden Protectorate display a marked continuous sedimentation of continental and neritic conditions, as neritic deposits narrow toward the north.

SEQUENTIAL DEVELOPMENT OF HANIFA FORMATION (UPPER JURASSIC) PALEOCNVIRONMENTS AND PALEOGEOGRAPHY, CENTRAL SAUDI ARABIA

The Hanifa Carbonate lithofacies (Upper Jurassic) started to develop during Early Kimmeridgian time, when an extensive area in central Arabia was covered by relatively deep marine waters. These rock units were formed along a shoreline, resulting in sucessive lagoonal and tidal‐flat belts, the deposition of pelleted and laminated calcilutites and gypsum, and a restricted fauna. The open shelf lay east of the lagoon zone, accounting for the development of oolites, coral reef and calcarenites, and a diversified fauna on the deeper shelf.At its maximum extent, the “Hanifa Sea” reached west nearly as far as the city of Riyadh in central Saudia Arabia, and extended NE and east, covering Kuwait, Iraq, Oman and Iran. South of Riyadh, the Hanifa lithofacies may be traced towards the SE over the Rub‐al‐Khali area, and SW over Yemen and the Aden Protectorates. North and NW of Riyadh, these same Upper Jurassic shallow‐marine rock units developed over Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and northern Sinai, and most probably extended over northern Africa.Although the sediments forming the lower part of the Hanifa suggest that during Early Kimmeridgian tima a transgressive phase began, and most likely continued during part of the Middle Kimmeridgian, a regressive stage ensued towards the end of th Kimmeridgian, when the upper part of the Hanifa was deposited.

The Free Yemeni movement (1940–48) and its ideas on reform

North Yemen, which was the last country in the Muslim world to overthrow its traditional Imamate, had, in fact, seen the first coup to occur in the Arab world after the Second World War. It was engineered, in 1948, by the Free Yemeni Movement (al-Ahrdr alYamaniyyin) which managed to seize power for twenty six days. The Zaydi Imamate had survived in the Yemen for eleven hundred years (A.D. 897-1962), mostly in the area north of San'a'. Traditionally the opposition to Zaydi Imams came from other claimants of the throne or from tribes revolting in order to assert their own independence. During his long reign (1904-48), Imam Yahya HamId al-Din faced both types of opposition but the one which led to his assassination was of a different nature. Although it allied itself, at times, with aspirants to the Imamate and with some discontented tribal shaykhs, the Free Yemeni Movement remained basically a political opposition seeking certain social and political reforms. The movement began with young men who studied in Cairo or Baghdad or had some knowledge about the outside world. They resented the backwardness of their country, its isolation from the rest of the world and the autocratic rule of the Hamid al-Din family. After his long and successful struggle against the Turks, Imam Yahya extended his authority over the whole of Yemen with the exception of the Aden Protectorates. He built his army from the, Zaydi tribes of Hashid, Bakfl and Khawlan, and depended in the administration of the country on Sayyids (Hashimites) and the Zaydi qddf class. Fearing that a Sayyid wielding too much power might threaten the rule of his family, Yahya gradually transferred senior posts of the Government from former aides to his own sons.' Imam Yahya was highly suspicious of foreigners, especially Europeans, coming to the Yemen. The colonization of Arab countries by Britain and France and of Abyssinia by Italy was a lesson fresh in Yahya's mind. Thus, he jealously guarded the sovereignty of his country and its traditional religious way of life by isolating it from foreign influence. He refused to allow in the country diplomatic missions or Western commercial companies or to encourage any form of contact with the outside world. He answered a critic, who pointed out the economic benefits that foreign firms would bring to the country, by saying that they did not help India to avert repeated famines; and that he and his people would rather eat straw than allow foreigners into the Yemen.2 Imam Yahya, who never travelled outside Yemen, did not appreciate modern conveniences of life which were enjoyed by other Arab countries. But the Yemenis who visited those countries were impressed by them. The Saudi war of 1934 which resulted in the defeat of Imam Yahya and his loss of 'Asir province triggered off the opposition to the Imamate. The early criticism of the state of affairs in the country took the indirect form of a new approach to literature. Young writers, who read Arabic books and magazines infiltrating through Aden and Mecca at the time of the pilgrimage, were

Hadramaut, Oman, Dhufar: the experience of revolution

When the ill-fated Federation of South Arabia came into being on January 1, 1963, it did not include among its member states the Hadramaut and the Mahra country to the east. It was not difficult to see the reasons for their exclusion. The Mahra territory, nominally under the rule of the sultan of Qishn and Socotra, was the wildest and most inaccessible corner of the eastern Aden Protectorate. Any effective display of authority there by the sultan or the protecting power was confined to the few villages along the coast. Inland a kind of formalized anarchy reigned among the tribal nomads and cultivators. The Hadramaut was a rather different case. Although the land was itself forbidding its very name means 'death is present' the energies and enterprise of its inhabitants had made it relatively prosperous, at least by the standards of southern Arabia. The coastal towns, the chief of which were Mukalla and Shihr, had been the centres of a wideranging maritime commerce, while in the interior, beyond thejol, the broken and desolate plateau which rose abruptly behind the coastal plain and stretched inland for a hundred miles, the fertile regions of the Wadi Hadramaut supported a thriving agriculture and a number of imposing towns, of which Shibam, Saiyun and Tarim were the best known. The comparative prosperity of the Hadramaut, however, did not derive primarily from its native economy but from the wealth accumulated overseas by the large colonies of emigre Hadramis, especially in India, the Philippines, Malaya and the East Indies. The constant intercourse they kept up with their homeland, no less than the steady flow of remittances they sent to it, was in large measure responsible for the country's progress before the Second World War; for this intercourse was the means by which innovations and improvements in agriculture, commerce and transport were introduced into the Hadramaut. What the Hadramis, resident and emigre alike, could not do, however, was to put an end to the constant feuding among the tribes, which all too often impeded or stultified the country's development. Sovereignty over the Hadramaut was exercised by the Qu'aiti sultan of Shihr and Mukalla, whose territory extended for some 200 miles along the coast and another 150 miles inland, to Shibam and its related towns and settlements in the Wadi Hadramaut; and by the Kathiri sultan of Saiyun and Tarim, whose lands formed an enclave athwart the Wadi Hadramaut with no access to the sea. Neither sultan's writ, however, ran much beyond the environs of the coastal and inland towns. Elsewhere the tribesmen, and especially those across whose diyar (ranges) the routes to the coast ran, acknowledged no authority but that of their own shaikhs and the more influential saiyids (or sada), the putative descendants of the Prophet, who were the wealthiest and most prominent class in Hadrami society. It was the great achievement of Harold Ingrams, who first visited the Hadramaut as a political officer in 1934 and three years later was appointed resident adviser at Mukalla, to bring the contentious tribes to conclude a truce among themselves in 1937, and by so doing to reinforce the authority of the Qu'aiti and Kathiri sultans. Ingrams's own account of his time in the Hadramaut is contained in his well-known Arabia and the Isles, one of the finest books on Arabia ever written. His widow, Doreen Ingrams, added her account of their

Ground Water in the Aden Sector of Southern Arabiaa

ABSTRACTA reconnaissance of parts of the former West Aden Protectorate enables a characterization of the dominant hydrologic elements to be made. In this desert environment intermittent streams from the east‐west range of mountains provide considerable water for flood irrigation and groundwater recharge of alluvial fans along the Gulf of Aden. High yield wells are developed in the coastal area and in at least one alluvial area on the back slope facing the Empty Quarter. Ground water in the interior is generally restricted to areas where wadi flow provides occasional recharge. Relatively few rock wells have been drilled in the area. Many wells in the alluvium yield silty water leading to clogging of the wells and undue pump wear.

The genus Liancalus Loew (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) in the Ethiopian Region

SynopsisThree new species of Liancalus, one from the West Aden Protectorate and two from Uganda, are described. The synonymy of the only other Ethiopian species, L. peringueyi, is discussed, and keys to the known Old World males, and to Ethiopian females of the genus are given.

Socotra: 'Island of Bliss'

Geologically socotra forms a north-easterly extension of Cape Guardafui, through the islands of Abd al Kuri and numerous other islands and reefs which stretch across the intervening 120 miles channel. Socotra more closely resembles the structure of the rock masses of the Sinai Peninsula, being composed of a basal Archean series, limestone and some comparatively recent volcanic rocks. Like Sinai, too, and volcanic Aden, some 500 miles to the west, Socotra has a land surface of very great antiquity. It is thought that the Haggier mountains, rising to 5000 feet, were at no time entirely submerged. The earlier inhabitants were probably from Arabia. The ethnological charac? teristics of the Socoteri Bedouin of the interior today closely resemble those of the Himyarites surviving in the Mahra district of South Arabia, who themselves came from the Yemen. The language spoken by the Bedouin, unintelligible to the major part of the island's population who speak Koranic Arabic, is very similar to the Ehkili dialect of the Mahra area. From early times Socotra has, however, claimed the attention of the outside world for short periods only. Ptolemy refers to it as 'Dioscoridis Insula', 'The Island of Bliss', and Arrian records that its inhabitants were subject to the kings of the Incense Country. It was known to sailors as a landmark on voyages to the east and a shelter from the Indian Ocean monsoons. Later, in the thirteenth century, Marco Polo knew ofthe island and in 1503 Socotra was made known to European navigators by Fernandez Perara. A few years afterwards Albuquerque took possession of the island but this occupation, like previous visits to Socotra, was short-lived. The reason for this obscurity lies in Socotra's inaccessibility. Monsoon winds from the north-east and south-west, blowing for up to ten months of the year, cause severe surf conditions along Socotra's exposed coastline and even if sailors, in those days of sail, had approached the coral-infested offshore, they would have found few safe anchorages. However, with the advent of steamships, it was to be expected that landings would now be attempted. Thus, in 1835, Lieutenants Haines and Wellsted of the Indian Navy visited the island in the survey ship Palinurus. From this time onwards there has been an increasing number of expeditions and visits by European explorers and scientists particularly since the advent of the aeroplane. Yet while much work has been done in uncovering Socotra's scientific secrets, little has yet been done adequately to survey the island since the earlier incomplete efforts made by the two officers of the Indian Navy. Today the Royal Navy still use the chart, surveyed by Lieutenants Haines and Wellsted and published by James Horsburgh in 1835, which, although it contains accurate coastal soundings, shows little detail inland. It is true that since then some place-names and topo? graphical details have been supplied by explorers, and soldiers who were stationed on the island during the Second World War. An airfield, at Ra's Karma, was used by several squadrons (South African, Dutch, Canadian as well as British), to counteract German and Japanese submarines operating in the area. To protect the airfield there was a garrison of troops from the Aden Protectorate Levies, the Somaliland Scouts, India and French West Africa. These findings, together with the results of

The Stratigraphy and Structure of the Eastern Aden Protectorate

The Stratigraphy and Structure of the Eastern Aden Protectorate

Geological Thesis on Hadhramut

The Stratigraphy and Structure of the Eastern Aden Protectorate By Z. R. Beydoun. (Overseas Geology and Mineral Resources Supplement Series No. 5.) Pp. viii + 107 + illustrations and maps. (London: H.M.S.O., 1964.) 27s. 6d.

Archaeology in the Aden Protectorates. By G. Lankester Harding.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsArchaeology in the Aden Protectorates. By G. Lankester Harding.Gus W. Van BeekGus W. Van Beek Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 69, Number 3July 1965 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 1Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/502298 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright © 1965 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.