The British role in the development of an infrastructure in TransJordan during the Mandate period, 1921-1946

Abstract

The thesis argues that the Mandate period was the pivotal moment in the creation of a modem state in TransJordan. Its central core examines the creation of infrastructural provision on two levels. On one level is the creation of an infrastructure of power, evidenced by the centralization of political power in Amman, and based on a Royal Court, the armed forces, the judiciary, and circumscribed by international boundaries. On another level, but in part stimulated by political pressures, were developments in the physical and social infrastructure, and the attempt to modernize agriculture, transport, communications, health and education. The British imposed their own political arrangements on TransJordan, but inherited the modernizing impulse of the late Ottoman period in society and the economy. However, the economic record of the Mandate period is disappointing, mainly because the country was wracked by a protracted drought between 1924 and 1936, and starved of funds for investment capital by the regime of financial austerity imposed by H.M.Treasury. Nevertheless, the Mandate period changed the shape of TransJordan, it maintained a process which led to a reordering of TransJordan's spatial contours, favouring the sedentary communities over the nomadic tribes. These spatial transformations, and the creation of governmental institutions in TransJordan combined to lay the foundations of a modern state.

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