The modern history of Jordan is the story of the creation of a state and the attempt to mould a political community that would render allegiance to that state, and it forms the subject matter of this book. Arguably such stories are never completed, though in Jordan’s case the first is considerably more advanced, some hundred years after its commencement, than the second. The existence of Amman as an economic and political power centre, and the elaboration of a formal set of sophisticated structures and processes, can, at one level, make the Jordanian state seem a convincing entity. However, a turbulent region, the relative strength of its neighbours, lingering concerns about its own economic viability (not least its habitual reliance on external rents) and an informal political culture sometimes at odds with the trappings of the modern state give one pause for thought. As for the creation of a political community, there are more, perhaps many more, chapters to be written in the story. The task of reconciling Palestinian and Transjordanian, Islamist and liberal, the tribal and the post-tribal among others continues to challenge the Jordanian body politic.