The Aden Pivot? British Counter-Insurgency after Aden
This article argues that the Aden Insurgency was a pivotal moment in the history of British counter-insurgency. We argue that it was in Aden where the newfound strength of human rights discourse, embodied in Amnesty International, and of anti-colonial sentiment, expressed by the UN General Assembly, forced the British government to pay attention to public perceptions of colonial brutality. Using archival sources, we foreground three episodes in the history of the insurgency to support our argument and to illustrate that the changes witnessed were not the result of ‘learning’ but of a fundamental shift in the international environment.