As I was visiting Cambodia, I wanted a short survey history of the country and this book, part of a series of ‘Short History of Asia’ series fitted the bill. John Tully was a professor at Victoria University (now retired), and as well as writing labour history, he also has written on Indo-China generally and Cambodia in particular. It’s a very accessible book, without footnotes but a reading list at the back. It was good start for a reader who wanted the whole sweep of Cambodian history, not just the Pol Pot era which tends to define our idea of Cambodia. He covers 2000 years, from the state of Funan, which predated Angkor right up to 2005, when the book was published.
Chapter 1 ‘The People and their Environment’ starts off with a geographical description of Cambodia, emphasizing its flatness in the middle and the huge Lake Tonlé Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, and the Mekong River which breaks up into tributaries at Phnom Penh before flowing into the Mekong Delta in Vietnam.
I found Chapter 2 ‘Cambodia before Angkor’ fascinating. There was settlement of hunter-gatherers from the Stone Age onwards, and the Kymer-Mon people settled around 3000 BCE after migrating from the north. By the first century CE there was the Funan civilization, a literate, Indianized society which relied on the trade routes stretching from Persia to China. It was followed by the rise of Chenla, which may have been two principalities- Chenla-of-the-Land and Chenla-of-the-Water. The people spoke an archaic form of the Cambodian language, and they were the ancestors of the modern Kymers. It was king Jayavarman II who decided to shift his centre of power from the Mekong up to the Siem Reap region north of Lake Tonlé Sap.
Chapter 3 goes through the shift to Angkor, and the monumental legacy at Angkor Wat. He discusses how the temples were built, and the sheer manpower that it must have taken to construct them. He goes on to discuss what we know about the common people of Angkor from the inscriptions on the monuments, which detail punishments and provide information about the social structure, clothing and slavery. I thought that he did a really good job here in making Angkor a living, vibrant, populated culture, something which can be forgotten when you’re looking at ruins. He enters into the debate over water, and the contribution of ecological factors to the decision to move back to the Mekong quatre-bras region, although as he points out Angkor Wat was not abandoned as such. He emphasizes the arrival of Teravada Buddhism, displacing the earlier Sivaism and Mahayana Buddhism.
Chapter 4 ‘From Angkor’s End to the French Protectorate’ sees 1431, and the Siamese sacking and burning of Angkor, as a turning point. The Siamese in Thailand to the west (The Tiger) and the Vietnamese to the east (the Crocodile) both threatened to absorb the weakened kingdom completely. By the late 18th century, a Dark Age had descended on the country. The time of grand monument building was over. The road and canal system fell into disrepair, and village life predominated. Siam and Vietnam didn’t want to confront each other directly, so they used Cambodia as a buffer. Although there was a period of relative peace under King Ang Duang who set up his palace at Udong, increasing rivalry between the French (who had colonies in Vietnam) and the British (who had influence in Thailand) saw Duang’s oldest son, Prince Norodom, turn to the French for support in 1863.
The French protectorate lasted between 1863 and 1953 (Chapter 5). The treaty signed by Prince Norodom on 11 August 1863 gave France the right to station warships at the Quatre Bras (Phnom Penh), gave privileges to the Catholic Church, and granted free trade to the French throughout the region. The French embarked on a program of reform including the creation of private property in land, the abolition of slavery, cuts to royal spending, and legal and administrative restructure. I hadn’t really thought about the implications of the fall of France to Germany in 1940. The French Indochina Governor-General Admiral Jean Decoux supported Vichy and set up concentration camps, introduced the fascist salute and the goose-step and ritualized chanting of Petain’s name. He readily agreed to Japanese requests to station troops throughout IndoChina. Norodom Sihanouk came to the throne in 1941 as a baby-faced 19 year old. After the war, France granted some autonomy to Cambodia, but still maintained control over the military and foreign relations, finance and communications. There were elections and the start of political parties, and a constitution was ratified in May 1947. There was a coup in 1952, probably fomented by Sihanouk – Tully really doesn’t like Sihanouk- who assumed power directly and dissolved the democratically elected government.
Chapter 6 ‘Sihanouk, Star of the Cambodian Stage 1953-1970’ looks at Sihanouk more closely. Sihanouk likened Cambodia to an ant under the feet of two fighting elephants- the U.S. and the Soviet Union. He maintained neutrality- or perhaps it was more a matter of playing on both sides- and needed to maintain his own position at home while preserving the integrity of his borders. In 1955 he abdicated in favour of his father, and became more directly involved in politics. He introduced the idea of the Sangkum, a merger of political parties, into a one-party state which set the tone for politics for the next 15 years (and perhaps is still visible in Cambodia’s politics today too). When his father died, he allowed himself to be ‘persuaded’ to become head of state, introducing a form of ‘totalitarian democracy’. He spent heavily on education and health, introduced a series of 5-year plans and state construction. Although he tried to repress the Cambodian communists, his foreign policy moved sharply to the Left, moving away from U.S. support and towards China and Russia.
A brief five years as a republic, in Ch. 7 ‘The Doomed Republic 1970-1975’ saw a coup against Sihanouk, probably tacitly supported by the CIA. Sihanouk joined hands with his former Kymer Rouge enemies to removed the ‘usurpers’. Prime Minister Lon Nol was crooked and second-rate, but he served at various times as both prime minister and president (and later Field Marshall as well). By this time, Nixon had initiated an invasion under Operation Shoemaker, which included massive bombing, napalm and atrocities against civilians particularly (but not exclusively) by Vietnamese troops. Fighting continued, and the Kymers Rouges (Tully uses both in the plural) guerillas took Phnom Penh.
Then followed ‘Pol Pot’s Savage Utopia’ between 1975-1979 (Chapter 8). What I like about Tully’s book is that this four-year period, which so dominates our perception of Cambodia, is just part -albeit a horrific one- of Cambodia’s history. By highlighting the war and disruption prior to 1975, Tully goes some way to explaining why the Kymers Rouges were able to take power: the society and economy had been traumatized by five years of war. Prince Sihanouk became the figurehead of the new regime, although it was made clear to him that he was only a figurehead. The chapter is only 30 pages in length, but Tully captures well the madness and cruelty of the regime. The irony is that it was Vietnam, the traditional enemy, that put an end to ‘Democratic Kampuchea’, rescuing Cambodia from the nightmare.
Chapter 9 ‘Painful Transition: The People’s Republic of Kampuchea’ looks at politics since 1979. Here Sihanouk’s fear of being an ant under elephant feet was realized. The West had such a fear of Vietnam and China, that they continued to recognize the Pol Pot government despite knowledge of what had occurred during their regime. Over time, attitudes towards China thawed, and Vietnam was no longer seen as an expansionary communist regime. How slippery is Sihanouk! Now that Pol Pot was no longer embraced by the West, he started distancing himself from him. We see in this chapter the increasing presence of Hun Sen.
The final chapter ‘Towards an Uncertain Future’ starts with the 1993 elections, overseen by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Sihanouk tried to put himself as the head of a coalition government, acting of president of a council of ministers and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. However, he had to settle for returning to the throne as King Sihanouk, playing a ceremonial role in a regime dominated by Hun Sen, who had emerged as the undisputed strongman.. At the time of writing (2005) 50% of Cambodia’s budget came from overseas aid, corruption was rife, there was an AIDS/HIV pandemic, and a burgeoning ecological crisis. Although wanting to avoid being a Cassandra or an oracle, his conclusion was not particularly hopeful:
Looking back over the past quarter of a century (let alone the earlier Dark Age that beset Cambodia in the first half of the 19th century) it is difficult to imagine that anything worse could befall the Khmers. Cambodia has staggered from crisis to crisis since 1970 and in the absence of a developed civil society there is little check on the arrogance of government and the corruption of the administration. With entrenched rulers primarily interested in their own power and wealth, there seems little prospect of change in the future.
End of chapter 10 – (e-book)
I found this book really useful. It gave me the wide span of history that I wanted, and it was pitched at the right level for someone unfamiliar with the history. It had maps, and a list of acronyms, and it managed the balance between international and internal politics, and the day-to-day experience.
My rating: 8.5
Sourced from: purchased e-book
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 