Transjordan

Mandate established by Britain in April 1921 east of the Jordan River, later to become the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946. Following the Ottoman ouster from the region in 1918, Britain had promised the territory to the Arabs as part of the Arab Kingdom of Syria in the Hussein–McMahon Correspondence between 1915 and 1916. However, with the defeat of the Arabs at the hands of French forces at the Battle of Maysalun in July 1920, Britain stepped in to determine the region’s administration. Britain maintained political representation east of the Jordan until November 1920, when Emir Abdullah, son of Sharif Hussein of Mecca who had been promised the Arab Kingdom and brother of King Faisal, who had recently been deposed by the French at the Battle of Maysalun, marched into the territory with his army and seized control. In March 1921, at the Cairo Conference, British authorities decided to bring the Emirate of Transjordan under the colonial British Mandate for Palestine, while excluding it from an agreement with Zionists regarding Jewish settlement. Emir Abdullah agreed and formed a government on April 11, 1921. Between 1921 and 1946, though Palestine and Transjordan were technically one mandate under British rule, they were administered separately, with the latter given considerable more autonomy under Abdullah’s leadership. Britain recognized the independence of Abdullah’s government in May 1923, and gradually relinquished its control, granting it independence as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on May 25, 1946.