ABSTRACT
I have tried to show that the Legion virtually created the state of Jordan. If it did not found the state, the Legion clearly served as the primary instrument of its pacification, control, and maintenance for thirty years from 1921 until 1951. As a military force the Legion was raised, trained, commanded, and financed by Britain via a legal-political mandate and treaty relationship with first Abdullah's Transjordan and Jordan, and later Husayn's Jordan. Until 1948 the Legion was practically the praetorian guard of a ruler who combined the attributes of a tribal chief, religious notable, and quasi-constitutional monarch. In great measure King Abdullah considered the Legion as the force that would some day play the crucial role of implementing his wider Arab political visions, such as the unification of a Hashemite-ruled Fertile Crescent, Before his death he witnessed its role in securing Central Palestine, and in the incorporation of its population to form the expanded Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
