The British East India Company landed Royal Marines at Aden on 19 January 1839 and established the Aden Settlement. British influence then expanded to develop an ‘Aden Protectorate’ in southern Arabia into the hinterland of the port of Aden and the Hadhramaut territories. In 1940 it was divided for administrative purposes into the Western Protectorate and the Eastern Protectorate, and today forms part of the Republic of Yemen.

The action to establish the former settlement was taken to prevent attacks by pirates against British merchant ships sailing to and from India. When the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the Port of Aden’s importance increased as a bunkering station for the Royal Navy and merchant shipping sailing to and from India and the Far East. On 1 April 1937, Aden Province, as it had been re-titled in 1932, had moved from British India control to become a Crown Colony and became one of the world’s busiest ship-bunkering and trading ports. Following the independence of India in 1947, its importance had waned. Later, a wave of Arab nationalism spread to the Arabian Peninsula from President Gamel Abdel Nasser’s Egypt and his doctrines supported the Yemeni anti-colonial movements, namely the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the Federation for the Liberation of South Yemen (FLOSY).

The Aden Emergency, or Radfan Uprising, began on 14 October 1963 when the NLF claimed responsibility for throwing a grenade at a gathering of British officials at Aden Airport. The British declared a State of Emergency throughout the colony and the Aden Protectorate and the situation escalated with the targeting of British troops and their families. By the beginning of September 1967, the situation was described by the British Command as ‘intensive street fighting’ rather than ‘Internal Security’. The uprising had hastened the end of British rule and the establishment of the independent People’s Democratic Republic of South Yemen on 30 November 1967.