Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page i CAMBODIAA SHORT HISTORY OF Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page ii Short History of Asia Series Other books in the series Short History of Bali, Robert Pringle Short History of China and Southeast Asia, Martin Stuart-Fox Short History of Indonesia, Colin Brown Short History of Japan, Curtis Andressen Short History of Laos, Grant Evans Short History of Malaysia, Virginia Matheson Hooker Series Editor Milton Osborne has had an association with the Asian region for over 40 years as an academic, public servant and independent writer. He is the author of many books on Asian topics, including Southeast Asia: An introductory history, first published in 1979 and now in its ninth edition, and The Mekong: Turbulent past, uncertain future, published in 2000. Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page iii A SHORT HISTORY OF CAMBODIA FROM EMPIRE TO SURVIVAL By John Tully Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page iv First published in 2005 by Allen & Unwin Copyright © John Tully 2005 Maps by Ian Faulkner All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Tully, John A. (John Andrew), A short history of Cambodia : from empire to survival. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 1 74114 763 8. 1. Cambodia – History. 2. Cambodia – Politics and government. 3. Cambodia – Economic conditions. I. Title. (Series : Short history of Asia). 959.6 Set in 11/14 pt Goudy by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed by South Wind Production, Singapore 10987654321 Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page v Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xiii Map of Cambodia xiv 1 The people and their environment 1 The land of Cambodia 2 The people of Cambodia 4 2 Cambodia before Angkor 7 Ancient Funan 8 The decline of Funan 13 3 The ancient Angkorean civilisation 16 Sources of information 18 Why was the capital moved? 20 The kings, their temples and monuments 23 Building the temples 30 What kind of civilisation built the monuments? 32 The hydraulic city debate 43 The decline of Angkor 48 4 From Angkor’s end to the French protectorate 55 The coming of the Europeans 57 The post-Angkorean social and economic system 61 Between tiger and crocodile 67 The Cambodian Dark Age 71 5 The French protectorate, 1863–1953 80 The tricolour comes to Cambodia 81 Cambodian nationalism’s hesitant beginnings 101 War, Japanese occupation and French humiliation 103 Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page vi A Short History of Cambodia The return of the French and the fall of Son Ngoc Thanh 111 The Royal Crusade for Independence 119 6 Sihanouk, star of the Cambodian stage, 1953–70 122 An ant under the feet of fighting elephants 124 Sihanouk consolidates power 128 The constitutional crisis of 1960 135 The flaws of Sihanoukism 138 The peasant uprising at Samlaut 146 Sihanouk loses control 148 7 The doomed Republic, 1970–75 152 The extent of US involvement in the coup 154 The crisis of the Republic 163 Nixon, Kissinger and the aerial bombardment 166 The death agony of the Republic 168 8 Pol Pot’s savage utopia, 1975–79 171 A byword for horror 171 Enemies of the people 183 International dimensions of the Kampuchea– Vietnam conflict 191 The downfall of Democratic Kampuchea 192 9 Painful transition: The People’s Republic of Kampuchea 196 The PRK’s manifesto 198 Beyond the imagination of mankind 199 Pragmatic policies of the new government 202 Momentous changes in international relations 212 A balance sheet of the PRK 215 10 Towards an uncertain future 220 The 1993 elections 221 Deeply entrenched social problems 229 vi Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page vii Contents Widespread ecological damage 231 What of the future? 232 Glossary and abbreviations 234 Notes 240 Further reading 241 Index 253 vii Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page viii For my parents, Matthew and Ethel Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page ix Preface This book traces the history of Cambodia from the Indian-influenced state of Funan, which predated Angkor (founded in 802), to the present: a grand sweep of over 2000 years. Also included is a brief discussion of the pre-history of what is today Cambodia in Chapter 2. The Cambodian monarchy is over 1200 years old; King Sihamoni, who sits on the throne today, is the latest incumbent in a line dating from the reign of King Jayavarman II, the shadowy founder of Angkor, the first unified polity of Cambodia. It is not an unbroken bloodline of kings, but was disrupted by usurpers on many occasions. The institution, however, has remained constant for almost all of this time. If we count Jayavarman II’s prede- cessors, the monarchy is even older, and epigraphic evidence indicates that Khmer culture predates him by around 200 years. Whether those that lived here before were Khmers, we cannot say, although it is prob- able that they were. If the monarchy has been remarkably resilient, so too have been the Khmer people and their culture, which sustained the kingdom. Although there have been some sharp discontinuities in Cambodian history, the Khmers today, particularly the rural dwellers who still make up the majority of the population, live much as their ancestors did. In their heyday, the martial Khmers carved out an immensely powerful empire with Angkor, the largest city of antiquity, at its centre. Today we see only the stone heart of a city that has long since rotted away, and can trace the pattern of the city’s veins, the network of canals that carried life-giving water from the distant heights of Kulen. Then, as now, the largest class was the peasantry, although they doubled as soldiers and builders. When the first European visitors arrived in the 16th century, the empire was in decline and the centre of gravity of the Cambodian state had shifted downstream to the Quatre Bras region at the head of the Mekong delta, where it remains today. The possible reasons for this shift are discussed in Chapter 3. ix Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page x A Short History of Cambodia Later years saw Cambodia gradually squeezed on two sides by powerful enemies, the Siamese (today’s Thais) to the west in the Menam Valley, and the Vietnamese to the east. The Vietnamese, who had migrated much earlier from what is today the Canton region of China to the Hanoi region, steadily pushed southwards and by 1780 they had completed their occupation of Kampuchea Krom, the formerly Khmer lands around what is today Saigon in the lower Mekong delta. In the same period, the Siamese kings carved off chunks of Cambodian terri- tory, and both neighbours demanded tribute. Cambodia had gone from empire to vassal state and by the late 18th century its sovereignty was in peril. The country had entered into a Dark Age. Rival armies of foreigners fought on Cambodia’s soil and sacked its towns. The Viet- namese directly administered the country for 30 years during the first half of the 19th century, placing puppets on the throne and striving to assimilate the Khmers, whom they regarded as ‘barbarians’, into Viet- namese culture. Cambodia almost became a Vietnamese province: the earlier fate of the Khmer lower Mekong delta lands. King Ang Duang restored order and a measure of sovereignty, but after his death in 1860 the country was once again plunged into chaos. This period is discussed in Chapter 4. Most historians conclude that Cambodia would have disappeared if Duang’s successor and eldest son, King Norodom, had not negotiated a treaty with France to keep his neighbours at bay. Under the terms of the treaty, as discussed in Chapter 5, his kingdom became a protectorate in 1863. The Siamese seethed, but could do little against superior force. The French gradually tightened control over the Kingdom to create a de facto colony, administered by a powerful official known as the Résident Supérieur. In 1887, Cambodia became part of the newly created Indo- chinese Federation under a governor-general with his capital at Hanoi. Along the way, French heavy-handedness provoked a huge revolt and Norodom died some years later a broken old man. Despite this, the French did preserve the country’s territorial integrity and much of its traditional way of life. The downside of the colonial period was that x Short History of Cambodia 10/3/06 1:57 PM Page xi Preface the French left a model of authoritarian rule and failed to develop the country socially and economically, thus contributing to later tragedies that befell Cambodia. The colonial period lasted until 1953, when King Norodom Sihanouk led his ‘royal crusade for independence’, which saw the resto- ration of Cambodian sovereignty even before the 1954 Geneva peace conference agreed to independence for the rest of French Indochina.