A History Of Cambodia - Internet Archive

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A HISTORY OFCAMBODIA

A HISTORYofCAMBODIAFourth EditionDAVID CHANDLERMonash UniversityA Member of the Perseus Books Group

Copyright 2008 by Westview PressPublished by Westview Press,A Member of the Perseus Books GroupAll rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part ofthis book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without writtenpermission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in criticalarticles and reviews. For information, address Westview Press, 2465Central Avenue, Suite 200, Boulder, Colorado 80301. Find us on theWorld Wide Web at www.westviewpress.com.Westview Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchasesin the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations.For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department atthe Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19103, orcall (800) 255-1514, or e-mail special.markets@perseusbooks.com.Designed by Timm BrysonLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataChandler, David.A history of Cambodia / David Chandler. — 4th ed.p. cm.Previously published: 3rd ed. 2000.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-13: 978-0-8133-4363-1ISBN-10: 0-8133-4363-1eBook ISBN: 97807867331561. Cambodia-History. I. Title.DS554.5.C46 2007959.6-dc22200700997110 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Liz, Maggie and Tom

ILLUSTRATIONSCambodia (map)A ninth-century statue buried in the forest near Kompong ChamNinth-century statues abandoned in the forest near Kompong ChamA Cambodian inscription, ninth century CEGuardian spirit, Preah Ko, ninth centuryA heavenly angel (thevoda) from an eleventh-century temple,ThommanonAngkor Wat, twelfth-century temple dedicated to Vishnu. The largestreligious building in the world, its image has appeared on fivesuccessive Cambodian flags since 1953A tower at the Bayon, Jayavarman VII’s temple-mountain, twelfthcentury CEA twelfth-century bas-relief at the Bayon depicting warfare betweenChams and KhmerReenactment of the Ramayana, Battambang, 1966A rice-growing village in Kompong Speu, 1961Casting a net on the Mekong, 1988, a technique that has remainedunchanged for several hundred yearsCambodian landscape, 2006Prince Sisowath and his entourage, 1866Entrance to the Royal Palace in Phnom PenhPhnom Penh, aerial view, 1970Cambodian classical dancer, Phnom Penh, 2003Sihanouk dismissed from office; graffito in Phnom Penh, 1970Young girls in revolutionary costume, 1972 Photo by Serge ThionZones and administrative divisions of Democratic Kampuchea (map)

Democratic Kampuchean cadre, Thai-Cambodian border, 1979Democratic Kampuchean killing ground near Phnom Penh, exhumedin 1979Cambodian woman and Vietnamese soldier, 1980Monks, Siem Reap, 2003Boys on a bridge, Phnom Penh, 1996. Photo by Douglas Niven

PREFACE TO THE FOURTHEDITIONI’m grateful to Steve Catalano of Westview Press for encouraging me toprepare this edition of a book that was first published in 1983. Mr.Catalano is the latest in a series of talented and helpful editors at Westviewwho have worked with me on this book. I’m also grateful to Kay Mareia,the project editor, and to Tom Lacey for his assiduous and helpfulcopyediting. Like the previous editions, this one is dedicated to mychildren.The structure and the general approach of the book remain unchanged,but I have revised Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 to reflect the valuable researchthat has been published since the 3rd edition appeared in 2000. I referespecially to the pioneering work of the Greater Angkor Project, ClaudeJacques, Christophe Pottier, Ashley Thompson, and Michael Vickery. Inthe rest of the book I have tried to keep abreast of significant newscholarship. The closing pages, which deal with events since 2000, benefitfrom several visits to Cambodia and from discussions with many peopleincluding Erik Davis, Youk Chhang, Penny Edwards, Kate Frieson, SteveHeder, Don Jameson, John Marston, Un Kheang, and Kim Sedara.After almost a half-century of being interested in Cambodia, I havecontracted many other intellectual debts which it’s a pleasure toacknowledge. The deepest ones are to my wife, Susan, who firstencouraged me to write this book, and to the late Paul Mus, who inspiredmy first two years of graduate study. I’m grateful also to my formerstudents Ben Kiernan and John Tully, and to a multitude of colleagues andfriends, including Joyce Clark, Christopher Goscha, Anne Hansen,Alexander Hinton, Helen Jessup, Alexandra Kent, Charles Keyes, JudyLedgerwood, Ian Mabbett, Milton Osborne, Saveros Pou, Lionel Vairon,John Weeks, and Hiram Woodward. The list could be much longer. AsPaul Mus has tellingly written, “People build themselves out of what isbrought to them by friends.”In 2005 the third edition was ably translated into Khmer under theauspices of the Center for Khmer Studies. The interest that the translationaroused among Cambodians has been very gratifying to me, and I hope

that some of the men and women who read the translation will becomehistorians of Cambodia themselves.Finally, these lines provide a sad but suitable occasion for me to mournthe recent loss of five amiable and talented compagnons de route: MayEbihara, Richard Melville, Ingrid Muan, Jacques Népote, and DavidWyatt. I miss their friendship, their company, and their insights intoCambodia’s history and culture.Melbourne, AustraliaFebruary 2007David Chandler

1INTRODUCTIONThis book will examine roughly two thousand years of Cambodian history.Chapters 2 through 5 carry the story up to the end of the eighteenthcentury; the remaining chapters deal with the period between 1794 and2007.One reason for writing the book has been to close a gap in thehistoriography of Southeast Asia. No lengthy history of Cambodia hasappeared since the publication of Adhémard Leclère’s Histoire duCambodge in 1914.1 Subsequent surveys, in French and English, havelimited themselves to the study of particular eras or have relied primarilyon secondary sources.2 Over the last sixty years or so, moreover, many ofLeclère’s hypotheses and much of his periodization—to say nothing of hisstyle of approach—have been revised by other scholars, weakened by newdocuments, or altered by archaeological findings. The colonial era ended in1953 and needs examination in terms of preceding history; moreover, theso-called middle period discussed in Chapters 5 through 7 has often beenignored even though it clearly forms a bridge between Angkor and thepresent.The time has come, in other words, to reexamine primary sources, tosynthesize other people’s scholarly work, and to place my own research,concerned mainly with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, into theframework of a general history, with a nonspecialist audience, as well asundergraduates, in mind.As it stands the book examines several themes. One of these has to dowith the effects on Cambodian politics and society of the country’slocation between Thailand and Vietnam. This theme, which is discussedin detail in Chapters 6 and 7, has been crucial since the second half of theeighteenth century and has recently faded in importance. For over twohundred years, beginning in the 1780s, the presence of two powerful,antagonistic neighbors forced the contentious Cambodian elite either toprefer one or the other or to attempt to neutralize them by appealing to anoutside power. Cambodian kings tried both alternatives in the nineteenthcentury. Later on, Norodom Sihanouk, Lon Nol, and Pol Pot all

attempted the second; the regime of the State of Cambodia (SOC),formerly the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, which lasted from 1979until 1991, committed itself to the patronage of Vietnam. A UNprotectorate (1991–93) neutralized the contending foreign patrons ofCambodia by removing it from Cold War rivalries. In the late 1990sCambodia and Vietnam joined the Association of Southeast AsianNations (ASEAN), and the Kingdom of Cambodia, established under thatname in 1993, has so far avoided seeking a dominant foreign patron,although in recent years China has emerged as an increasingly importantally and benefactor of the regime.Another theme, really a present-day one, has to do with therelationship of contemporary Cambodians to their past. The history ofAngkor, after all, was deciphered, restored, and bequeathed to them bytheir French colonial masters. Why had so many Cambodians forgotten it,or remembered it primarily as myth? What did it mean to have thememories and the grandeur brought back to life, in times of dependence?What happened to the “times between” Angkor and the modern era? Andin what ways are the post-Angkorean years, the colonial era, and what hashappened since 1954 connected to these earlier periods? How are therevolutionary events of the 1970s to be remembered, taught, andinternalized? There has even been pressure from the government to playdown the teaching of Cambodian history as too controversial.A third theme arises from the pervasiveness of patronage andhierarchies in Cambodian thinking, politics, and social relations. For mostof Cambodian history, it seems, people in power were thought (bythemselves and nearly everyone else) to be more meritorious than others.Older people were also ideologically privileged. Despite some alterationsthese arrangements remained unchanged between Cambodia’s so-calledIndianized phase in the early years if the present era and the onset ofTheravada Buddhism in the fourteenth century, when some egalitarianism,but not much, seeped into Cambodian social relations.3 The widespreadacceptance of an often demeaning status quo meant that in Marxist termsCambodians went through centuries of mystification. If this is so, andone’s identity was so frequently related to subordination, what did politicalindependence mean?A final theme, related to the third, springs from the inertia that seemsto be characteristic of many rural societies like Cambodia. Until veryrecently, alternatives to subsistence agriculture and incremental social

improvements of any kind were rarely available to most Cambodians andwere in any case rarely sought, as the outcome could be starvation orpunishment at the hands of those in power. In the meantime, crops had tobe harvested and families raised, as they had been harvested and raisedbefore. The way things had always been done in the village, the family, andthe palace was seen as the way things should be done. Clearly, this attitudesuited elite interests and kept the rest of society in line, but the processmay well have been less cynical than we might wish to think. After all,how else was stability to be maintained? Throughout Cambodian history,in any case, governance (or rajakar, literally “royal work”) was the privilegeenjoyed by people freed in some way from the obligation of growing theirown food. The governed grew food for those above them in exchange fortheir protection.This conservative cast of mind has led some writers to suggest that, atleast until the 1970s, Cambodia and its people were unchanging andasleep. The notion of changelessness suited the French colonialadministration, as it implied docility. For later observers there has beensomething “un-Cambodian” about revolutionary efforts, howevermisguided and inept, to break into a new kind of life and something unCambodian about the country becoming a player on the global scene.The notion of changelessness, of course, is an oversimplification ofevents, but it has persisted for a long time among students of Cambodianhistory and among Cambodians with a conservative point of view. Thenotion will be undermined in this book, for each of the chapters thatfollow records a major transformation in Cambodian life. The firstperceptible one came with the mobilization of population and resources toform a somewhat Indianized polity at the start of the Christian era,discussed in Chapter 2. Another followed the concentration of power atAngkor in the ninth and tenth centuries, which is described in Chapter 3.A state emerged at Angkor that some scholars have seen as a classicexample of Karl Wittfogel’s notion of oriental despotism or of Marx’sconcept of an Asiatic mode of production and which has bequeathed anextraordinary legacy of religious monuments and sculpture.4 Still anothertransformation, discussed in Chapter 4, overtook the Khmer when theircapital was damaged by Cham invaders in 1177 and was rebuilt into aBuddhist city by the Khmer monarch Jayavarman VII, who was aMahayana Buddhist. In the century following his death in 1220, stillanother transformation occurred: the conversion of most Cambodians

from a loose-fitting form of Shaivistic Hinduism, with perhaps someMahayana overtones, to Theravada Buddhism, the religion of the newkingdoms that were coming into being in what is now central Thailand.These changes are discussed in Chapter 5. The abandonment of Angkor inthe fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the southward drift ofCambodia’s demographic center of gravity in this period probably had evenmore profound effects.Because the sources are so thin and unreliable, the middle period ofCambodian history, extending from the abandonment of Angkor to theimposition of French control, is difficult to study, but it is clear that it wasvery different from its Angkorean forebear. For one thing, the spread ofTheravada Buddhism (and its corollary, Thai cultural influence)diminished the importance of priestly families close to the king who hadcrowded around the throne looking for preferment. In Angkorean times,these families had controlled much of the land and manpower aroundAngkor through their connections with royally sponsored religiousfoundations. As these foundations were replaced by wats (TheravadaBuddhist temples), the forms of social mobilization that had been in effectat Angkor broke down, and so did the massive and complicated irrigationsystem that had allowed Angkorean populations to harvest two orsometimes three crops of rice per year. The elite grew less numerous

the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 255-1514, or e-mail special.markets@perseusbooks.com. Designed by Timm Bryson Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chandler, David. A history of Cambodia / David Chandler. — 4th ed. p. cm. Previously published: 3rd ed. 2000. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8133-4363-1 .