The Chief Commissioner's Province of Aden was the administrative status under which the former Aden Settlement (1839–1932) was placed from 1932 to 1937. Under that new status, the

Viceroy of India The Governor-General of India (1773–1950, from 1858 to 1947 the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, commonly shortened to Viceroy of India) was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom and after Indian independence in 19 ...

assumed direct control over Aden, which had hitherto been administered by the government of the Bombay Presidency. The

Aden Protectorate The Aden Protectorate ( ar, محمية عدن ') was a British protectorate in South Arabia which evolved in the hinterland of the port of Aden and in the Hadhramaut following the conquest of Aden by the Bombay Presidency of British India ...

remained unaffected by this change.

Background

For nearly a century following the capture of the port of Aden by forces of the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and South ...

in 1839, the town and immediate surrounding area under direct British rule, known as the Aden Settlement, had been a dependency of the distant Bombay Presidency. The Settlement's indeterminate position at the southwestern end of the Arabian peninsula was bound to cause difficulties and historian R. J. Gavin points out that "Aden’s whole history since 1839 had been marked by administrative confusion and complication." Before taking action, the chief British official at Aden, the Resident, was often required to obtain sanction from three different authorities, the Bombay Government, the Government of India (headed by the Viceroy) and the Colonial Office in London. Aden,in 1864

Matters came to a head during World War I and in 1917, the Government of India, recognising its inability to provide sufficient forces to defend Aden against invading Turkish forces, transferred military control of the Settlement to the

War Office The War Office was a department of the British Government responsible for the administration of the British Army between 1857 and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the new Ministry of Defence (MoD). This article contains text from ...

and control of the

affairs to the Foreign Office. The transfer was incomplete since India retained control of affairs within the Settlement itself, something which was increasingly seen in London as an anachronism given that Aden so obviously belonged to the Middle East and the Arab world. Things dragged on however and for the next two decades the administration of Aden witnessed incessant bureaucratic wrangling between the Bombay Presidency, the Government of India, the India Office, the

Colonial Office The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created to deal with the colonial affairs of British North America but required also to oversee the increasing number of c ...

and the War Office, "which broke through from time to time in the columns of newspapers and on to the floor of the House of Commons and the representative assemblies in India." The chief disagreement was over the division of costs between India and London, in particular regarding the sizeable defence costs of Aden Another important roadblock to the full transfer of Aden to London was the unpopularity of the Colonial Office among the well-established and powerful Indian commercial community of Aden, which was aware of the discrimination in administration against Indians in British East Africa and feared the same would happen to them if Aden was placed under the control of the Colonial Office.

Creation of the Chief Commissioner's Province

The issue gained urgency at the end of the 1920s when discussions on constitutional reforms in India began. Far-away Aden with its Arab majority could not be accommodated in a new federal India where a considerably empowered Bombay legislative assembly would remain in charge. Therefore, it was decided that, until the final status of Aden was decided, Bombay would yield its administrative control over the territory which would become a Chief Commissioner's Province under the direct control of the Viceroy. This status, which took effect on 1 April 1932, was expected to be short-lived, and one provision of the Government of India Act 1935, stated that "Aden shall cease to be a part of British India". In accordance with the Aden Colony Order, 1936, Aden became a Crown Colony under the full responsibility of the Colonial Office effective 1 April 1937. At the time, the British government had made it clear that it was unwilling to share control of such an vital imperial base or anything pertaining to it with an independent Indian administration. However, to mollify the Indian community which still opposed the transfer, links with India were not totally severed. While the District and Sessions Court of Aden became the Supreme Court of the new Colony, appeals could be made to the High Court of Judicature in Bombay in civil cases involving property and some civil rights cases, as well as in criminal cases. The Indian rupee maintained its official currency status. Sir Bernard Reilly, who had been named Resident in 1931, then Chief Commissioner in 1932, became the first Governor of

Aden Colony Aden Colony ( ar, مستعمرة عدن, ), also the Colony of Aden, was a British Crown colony from 1937 to 1963 located in the south of contemporary Yemen. It consisted of the port of Aden and its immediate surroundings (an area of ). Prio ...

Composition of the population of Aden in 1933

Arabs 29,820
Indians 7,287
Jews 4,120
Somalis 3,935
Europeans 1,145
Miscellaneous 331

Chief Commissioners

''For previous British ruling officers see List of British representatives at Aden'' * Sir Bernard Rawdon Reilly, first as resident in 1931, then as Chief Commissioner.Sir Bernard Rawdon Reilly - The British Empire
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Views of Aden

References