IOR/L/PS/12/1486

The file contains the following Political Intelligence Summaries, compiled by the Aden Political Secretary and sent to the Secretary of State for the Colonies:

• 1934, intelligence summary numbers 394-411 (ff 400-450)
• 1935, intelligence summary numbers 412-466 (ff 275-398)
• 1936, intelligence summary numbers 467-518 (ff 147-274)
• 1937, intelligence summary numbers 519-570 (ff 4-146)

From summary no. 554 onwards (8 September 1937) the summaries covered the Western Aden Protectorate only. The summaries contain information on:

• the relations between the British and the Aden Protectorate chiefs, the Imam of Yemen, and Ibn Sa'ūd;
• inter-tribal disputes, attacks on transports, prisoner exchanges, the payment of blood money, territorial disputes, and tribal successions;
• the movement and activities of foreign nationals and companies within the Aden Protectorate and the Yemen, and the arrival of foreign vessels and goods (Italian, Russian, Dutch, French, Greek, Japanese, and Belgian);
• the British bombing of villages in the Aden Protectorate;
• the Abyssinian crisis and the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936), including details of Italian troop and arms movements, reports on Italian East Africa, and the movement of Aden and Yemeni labourers;
• Saudi-Yemeni relations, including the Saudi-Yemeni War (1934), treaty negotiations between Ibn Sa'ūd and the Imam of Yemen, the Saudi-Yemeni Boundary Commission, and the activities of the Saudi adviser Harry St John Philby within the Aden Protectorate and Yemen;
• the suppression of slavery;
• the construction of roads and telegraph lines, plus trade in transport and communications equipment;
• the arms and currency [specie] trade and smuggling activities;
• public opinion towards the British, with particular reference to the treatment of Muslims in Palestine;
• Iraqi-Yemeni relations, including negotiations regarding the Treaty of Arab Alliance;
• oil exploration.

The summaries include references to the activities and movements of: Freya Stark (1893?-1993), writer and traveller; Carl Rathjens (1887-1966), ethnologist and geographer; Harry St John Bridger Philby (1885-1960), explorer and Arabist; R C Maxwell Darling, entomologist; the Egyptian Scientific Mission to the Aden Protectorate; and a French traveller, tentatively identified as Alphonse Lippmann.

The file includes a divider which gives a list of correspondence references contained in the file by year. This is placed at the end of the correspondence (folios 1-2).