Aden Province

Dependency of British India The Chief Commissioner's Province of Aden was a province of British Raj under which the former Aden Settlement (1839–1932) was placed from 1932 to 1937. Under that new status, the Viceroy of India assumed control over Aden, which had hitherto been administered by the government of the Bombay Presidency. The Aden Protectorate remained unaffected by this change. Background For nearly a century following the 1839 capture of the port of Aden by forces of the East India Company ('EIC'), the town and its immediately surrounding area were under British rule and known as the Aden Settlement. This area became a dependency (a semi-exclave) of the distant Bombay Presidency, a polity and administrative unit of the British Raj first established in 1668 by the EIC. The settlement's indeterminate position at the southwestern end of the distant Arabian peninsula, as well as its varying population and strategic criticality, meant that there were bound to be difficulties in these governance arrangements. Historian RJ Gavin pointed out in 1975 that "Aden’s whole history since 1839 had been marked by administrative confusion and complication." Before taking action, the