The Historiography of Hashemite Rule

Abstract

Modernization theory supplied little to resolve the paradox of Hashemite survival, or throw new light on the puzzle of monarchical resilience in Jordan. Its conceptualization of social change in terms of the static polarities of tradition and modernity obscures the real historical processes that bound the population of the East Bank to the monarchy during the Mandate Period, even as its focus on Trans-Jordanian “pre-modern values” neglects the material bonds that ensured their continued support after independence.¹ Similarly, the restriction of a modern, and therefore oppositionist, political sensibility to the Palestinians belittles a current of Trans-Jordanian political contention that has been at least as important as the more often remarked opposition of the West Bankers and the refugees. Tensions between Amman and the rural hinterlands, or between local loyalties and nation-building during Mandatory rule, are underplayed, and no satisfactory account is given of the role of East Bankers in the broad “supra-communal” movements of opposition that took their inspiration from left-leaning pan-Arabism after independence.²All in all, modernization theory perpetuated an image of Hashemite rule in Jordan in which the societal history of the East Bank was neglected, its political economy left unexamined, and the social upheaval brought by state formation and capitalist development all but ignored.