IOR/L/PS/12/1492

The file contains correspondence regarding the recruitment of labour from the Aden Settlement, the Aden Protectorate, and Yemen, for service in Italian Somaliland.

Following requests from the Italian Consul at Aden for an increased number of labourers to work in Italian Somaliland and Eritrea, the India Office, the Foreign Office and the Aden Chief Commissioner consider the options available to prevent the recruitment of British Subjects or Protected Persons for either the Italian or Ethiopian forces. Following communications with the King of Yemen it is agreed that Yemeni subjects should also be prevented from travelling from Aden ports for that purpose.

The file also contains telegraphic correspondence with the Government of India, the Governor-General of Sudan, and British diplomatic staff in British Somaliland, Ethiopia, and Italy, requesting that efforts should be made to prevent recruitment from those locations. The likelihood of war between Italy and Ethiopia is discussed throughout the correspondence.

A large part of the correspondence concerns the legality of preventing emigration from Aden ports, and involves discussion of the Indian Emigration Act (1922), and the drafting of the Aden (Protection of Emigrants) Regulation (1935), the published version of which appears at ff 5-13. The Act prohibited emigration from Aden without obtaining a permit.

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 (folio 1).