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The Legal Status of Aden Colony and the Aden Protectorate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2017

Robert R. Robbins*
Affiliation:
Tufts College

Abstract

The terms of Annex Three of the Anglo-Italian Agreement signed at Rome on April 16, 1938, focus attention, inter alia, upon the legal status of a vast area adjoining the British Crown Colony of Aden. Not only does this part of the agreement bring to the fore many questions relative to the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea region, but recent political developments in India as well have resulted in a change in legal status of Aden together with the Aden hinterland. These changes under the British Crown are important in a discussion of British jurisdiction in this area.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © by the American Society of International Law 1939

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References

1 Great Britain, Treaty Series, No. 31 (1938), Cmd. 5726; Orierte Moderno, XVIII, 1938, 213–222. The agreement was effective Nov. 16, 1938. Great Britain, Treaty Series, No. 6 (1939), Cmd. 5923.

2 26 Geo. 5 & 1 Edw. 8, XII, 94 (2).

3 S. R. & O., 1936 (No. 1031); also Times (London), July 8, 1936, 15 d.

4 Times (London), July 22, 1936, 7a.

5 Great Britain and the East, XLVII, 75.

6 Its history prior to acquisition is recorded briefly in Vol. XI of C. U. Aitchison, A Collection of Treaties, Engagements and Sanads Relating to India and Neighbouring Countries. Revised and continued up to the end of 1930 under the authority of the Government of India (Delhi, Manager of Publications, 1933), 1–41. For a more extended history, see Fritz Apelt, Aden, Eine kolonialgeographische und kolonialpolitische Studie (Groszenhain, 1929), 49–73; also F. M. Hunter, The British Settlement of Aden (London, Triibner & Co., 1877). An historical treatment of the Hadhramaut is to be found in W. H. Ingram’s Report issued by the Colonial Office: Aden Protectorate, A Report on the Social, Economic and Political Condition of the Hadhramaut, Colonial No. 123 (London, His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1936).

7 Aitchison, op. cit., XI, 53 ff.

8 Ibid., 57–58.

9 Shaikh Othman was purchased from the Sultan of Lahej in 1882 for $25,000, ibid., XI, 70 ff.

10 By the 1931 census these areas had a population of 48,338, The India Year Book 1936–37, XXIII, 148. Aden received and housed a number of Indian émigrés from Ethiopia during the recent Italo-Ethiopian War. The number of Abyssinian refugees at Aden numbered 22, Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th series, 326, July 30, 1937, 3497.

11 The India Year Book, XIX, 160.

12 S. R. & O., 1936 (No. 1031), 20.

13 S. R. & O., 1936 (No. 1031), 20.

14 Draft Instructions under the Royal Sign Manual and Signet to the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Colony of Aden, Cmd. 5222. One of the significant instructions reads as follows: “It being Our intention that all persons inhabiting the Colony should have full religious liberty of conscience and free exercise of their respective modes of religious worship, We do hereby require the Governor to permit all persons within the Colony to have such liberty, and to exercise such modes of religious worship, provided they be content with the quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the same, not giving offense or scandal to the Government ” (Sec. 22); see also Times (London), July 8,1936,15 d.

15 American consular functions in the Hadhramaut, Sa’udi Arabia (including Asir and El Hasa) and the Yemen are assigned informally to the consular office of Aden, Register of the Department of State, October 1, 1937.

16 See Annex Three, Art. VI, of the Anglo-Italian Agreement of April 16, 1938. In his Government of the British Empire (New York, Macmillan, 1935), 489, A. B. Keith declares that the Aden Protectorate extends over 9,000 square miles. The India Year Book, XXIII, 148, states that the Aden Protectorate comprises 42,000 square miles. The map of Asia (1933 projection) of the National Geographic Society includes in the British hinterland of Aden a much greater area, including a vast portion of the Rub al Khali connecting with the Qatar on the Persian Gulf.

17 H. St. J. B. Philby, The Empty Quarter (London, Constable & Co., 1933).

18 Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th series, 366, June 1, 1938, 2072.

19 S. R. & O., 1902 (No. 466).

20 53 & 54 Vict., c. 37.

21 S. R. & 0., 1937 (No. 246). The most recent provision by His Majesty’s Privy Council for the “peace, order, and good government of the Protectorate of Aden.”

22 Aitchison, op. dt., XI, i-vi.

23 Keith, op. dt., 500; cf. the dictum of M. Max Huber, Arbitrator of the Palmas Island Case, this Journal, Vol. 22 (1928), 897–8: “As regards contracts between a state or a company such as the Dutch East India Company and native princes or chiefs of peoples not recognized as members of the community of nations, they are not, in the international law sense, treaties or conventions capable of creating rights and obligations such as may in international law arise out of treaties. But on the other hand, contracts of this nature are not wholly void of indirect effects on situations governed by international law; if they do not constitute titles in international law, they are nonetheless facts of which the law must in certain circumstances take account.”

24 Tshekedi Khama v. Ralshosa, [1931] A. C. 784.

25 Herbert Arthur Smith, Great Britain and the Law of Nations (London, P. S. King, 1932, 2 vols.) II, 43. In rendering an advisory opinion on a similar question, the Permanent Court of International Justice held that, in international law, the application of French nationality decrees in the French protectorates of Tunisia and Morocco was not solely within the domestic jurisdiction of France as claimed under Art. 15, para. 8 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. P.C.I.J., Collection of Advisory Opinions, No. 4, 28–29.

26 M. F. Lindley, Acquisition and Government of Backward Territory in International Law (London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1926), 308.

27 Muscat Dhows Case (1905).

28 S. R. & O., 1937 (No. 246), Sec. 2.

29 Vol. XXIII, 148.

30 Aitchison, op.cit., XI, 42–43.

31 Oriente Moderno, XIV, 1934, 367–369.

32 British and Foreign State Papers, CXXXIV, 1931, 273.

33 In the various agreements these payments range from fifty to several thousand dollars annually.

34 Times (London), Feb. 18, 1937, 4g.

35 Aitchison, op.cit., XI, 148.

36 Times (London), July 22, 1937, 14 c.

37 Aitchison, op.cit., XI, 145.

38 Ibn Saud, The Puritan King of Arabia (London, Jonathan Cape, 1933).

39 World Review, January, 1938.

40 “Falsehoods About the Aden Protectorate,” Great Britain and the East, L, 72.

41 “I Live in Mecca,” The Living Age, 354, No. 4458, March, 1938, 22.

42 Great Britain and the East, L, 265.

43 Colonial No. 123, 82.

44 Times (London), March 18,1937, 7b; see also Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th series, 331, 869–70.

45 Keith, op. cit., 464, 501.

46 R. v. Crewe, [1910] 2 K. B. 603.

47 Fenwick, C. G., Wardship in International Law (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1919), 33 Google Scholar.

48 Keith, A. B., The Constitution, Administration and Laws of the Empire (New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1924), 267 Google Scholar.

49 Colonial No. 123, 5.

50 The Southern Gates of Arabia (London, John Murray, 1936), 118.

51 Great Britain and the East, L, 618.

52 Lindley, op.cit., 181–182.

53 Mighell v. Sultan of Johore, [1894] 1 Q. B. 149.

54 Duff Development Co. Ltd. v. Kelantan Government, [1924] A. C. 797.