The authors are indebted to a number of individuals in government
agencies and at private institutions who shared their time and
specialized knowledge to provide research data and perspective to the
production of this book. Among them were Bill Herod and Patricia D.
Norland of the Indochina Project, Ok Soeum of the Cambodian Buddhist
Association, and Rath Chhim of the MRM Language Research Center. Bill
Herod, Frank Tatu, and Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. Hammerquist generously
shared their personal and, in many cases, unique photographs of Cambodia
for use in this book.
The authors also wish to express their appreciation to members of the
Library of Congress staff who contributed to the preparation of this
volume. These included Richard F. Nyrop who reviewed and coordinated all
chapters; Robert L. Worden who reviewed all draft chapters; and Martha
E. Hopkins, who, in addition to editing a chapter, managed editing and
production of the entire book. Andrea Matles Savada was responsible for
seeing the book through to its completion after the departure of the
editor of the book. Other Library of Congress staff members who
contributed substantial efforts were David P. Cabitto, Sandra K.
Cotugno, and Kimberly A. Lord, who prepared and arranged all graphic
material; Teresa E. Kamp, who drew the cover and chapter heading
illustrations; Harriett R. Blood, who drew the topography map; Susan M.
Lender, who reviewed the maps; Tracy Henry Coleman and Meridel Jackson,
who performed word processing for all chapters; editorial assistants
Barbara Edgerton, Izella Watson, and Monica Shimmin, who helped prepared
the manuscript in final form; and Malinda B. Neale of the Library of
Congress Composing Unit, who prepared the camera-ready copy under the
supervision of Peggy F. Pixley.
Others who contributed to the book were Richard Kollodge, Marilyn L.
Majeska, Michael Pleasants, and Catherine Schwartzstein, who edited
chapters, and Shirley Kessel, of Communicators Connections, who prepared
the index.
Cambodia - Preface
The previous edition of Cambodia: A Country Study was
compiled in 1972 when the ill-fated Khmer Republic was fighting for its
life against the Khmer Rouge. In the one and one-half decades since that
time, profound upheavals have wrought substantial political changes in
the country. These changes, and the regimes that sought to impose them,
are only now beginning to be studied with objectivity. In addition, the
quickening pace of negotiations concerning the future of the country
suggests that a watershed period in its modern history may be
approaching. It is, accordingly, time for a new country study, not only
to catch up with the momentous developments of the past fifteen years,
but also to establish some point of departure, some bench mark by which
to interpret future events.
This is a completely new book, and, unlike the previous edition, it
follows the standard, revised format of the entire country study series.
It presents its narrative under five major concomitants of the Cambodian
experience: historical setting, society and environment, economy,
government and politics, and national security. Sources of information
for this study included both monographs and serials, especially material
published since 1975.
It should be noted that, as a result of the Khmer Rouge policy of
eradicating the traces of its predecessor and of establishing a
ruthlessly self-sufficient, anti-modernistic regime, after mid 1975,
statistical and quantitative data for Democratic Kampuchea are
contradictory and virtually nonexistent. As for its successor, the
People's Republic of Kampuchea, such data are only now becoming
available, and they remain fragmentary and contradictory. Cambodia
continues to be a desperately poor country, its infrastructure ravaged
by war, and its thin stratum of educated citizens either in exile or
nearly wiped out during the Khmer Rouge years; it is thus scarcely able
to compile data that one has come to expect of other nations.
Nevertheless, the country is making an effort to bind its wounds and to
reestablish sovereignty over its territory, without enduring either a
suffocating Vietnamese presence or a chilling reimposition of Khmer
Rouge authority. More and better data should become available as
Cambodia slowly rehabilitates itself and resumes its place in the Asian
family of nations.
A word of explanation is needed concerning the use of
"Cambodia" instead of "Kampuchea" to designate the
country. According to historian David P. Chandler, both terms are
derived from "Kambuja," a Sanskrit word thought to have been
applied originally to a north Indian tribe. The selection of
"Cambodia," therefore, was without ideological connotation. It
is more recognizable to the English-speaking reader, and it adheres to
the standard practice of the United States Board on Geographic Names
(BGN), which also has been followed in the spelling of all place names.
In April 1989, after the cut-off date of research for this book, Prime
Minister Hun Sen of the People's Republic of Kampuchea announced that
the name of the country had been changed to the State of Cambodia. In
recent years some provinces have been combined, renamed, and then
divided again several times. The most recent case is that of Bantay
Meanchey, the formation of which-- from parts of Batdambang,
Siemreab-Otdar Meanchey, and Pouthisat-- was announced in late 1987 to
take effect in 1988. For the geographic terms occurring most frequently,
such as names of provinces, the BGN designations together with the more
common, journalistic equivalents are as follows:
BGN Name Common Name
Batdambang Battambang
Kampong Cham Kompong Cham
Kampong Chhnang Kompong Chnang
Kampong Saom Kompong Som
Kampong Spoe Kompong Speu
Kampong Thum Kompong Thom
Kaoh Kong Koh Kong
Kracheh Kratie
Mondol Kiri Mondolkiri
Otdar Meanchey Oddar Meanchey
Pouthisat Pursat
Rotanokiri Ratanakiri
Stoeng Treng Stung Treng
Takev Takeo
Cambodia - Historical Setting
THE KHMER PEOPLE were among the first in Southeast Asia to adopt
religious ideas and political institutions from India and to establish
centralized kingdoms encompassing large territories. The earliest known
kingdom in the area, Funan, flourished from around the first to the
sixth century A.D. It was succeeded by Chenla, which controlled large
areas of modern Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand (known as Siam
until 1939). The golden age of Khmer civilization, however, was the
period from the ninth to the thirteenth century, when the kingdom of
Kambuja, which gave Kampuchea, or Cambodia, its name, ruled large
territories from its capital in the region of Angkor in western
Cambodia.
Under Jayavarman VII (1181-ca. 1218), Kambuja reached its zenith of
political power and cultural creativity. Following Jayavarman VII's
death, Kambuja experienced gradual decline. Important factors were the
aggressiveness of neighboring peoples (especially the Thai, or Siamese),
chronic interdynastic strife, and the gradual deterioration of the
complex irrigation system that had ensured rice surpluses. The Angkorian
monarchy survived until 1431, when the Thai captured Angkor Thom and the
Cambodian king fled to the southern part of his country.
The fifteenth to the nineteenth century was a period of continued
decline and territorial loss. Cambodia enjoyed a brief period of
prosperity during the sixteenth century because its kings, who built
their capitals in the region southeast of the Tonle Sap (Great Lake)
along the Mekong River, promoted trade with other parts of Asia. This
was the period when Spanish and Portuguese adventurers and missionaries
first visited the country. But the Thai conquest of the new capital at
Lovek in 1594 marked a downturn in the country's fortunes and Cambodia
became a pawn in power struggles between its two increasingly powerful
neighbors, Siam and Vietnam. Vietnam's settlement of the Mekong Delta
led to its annexation of that area at the end of the seventeenth
century. Cambodia thereby lost some of its richest territory and was cut
off from the sea. Such foreign encroachments continued through the first
half of the nineteenth century because Vietnam was determined to absorb
Khmer land and to force the inhabitants to accept Vietnamese culture.
Such imperialistic policies created in the Khmer an abiding suspicion of
their eastern neighbors that flared into violent confrontation after the
Khmer Rouge established its regime in 1975.
In 1863 King Norodom signed an agreement with the French to establish
a protectorate over his kingdom. The country gradually came under French
colonial domination. During World War II, the Japanese allowed the
French government (based at Vichy) that collaborated with the Nazis the
Vichy French to continue administering Cambodia and the other
Indochinese territories, but they also fostered Khmer nationalism.
Cambodia enjoyed a brief period of independence in 1945 before Allied
troops restored French control. King Norodom Sihanouk, who had been
chosen by France to succeed King Monivong in 1941, rapidly assumed a
central political role as he sought to neutralize leftist and republican
opponents and attempted to negotiate acceptable terms for independence
from the French. Sihanouk's "royal crusade for independence"
resulted in grudging French acquiescence to his demands for a transfer
of sovereignty. A partial agreement was struck in October 1953. Sihanouk
then declared that independence had been achieved and returned in
triumph to Phnom Penh. The following year, as a result of the Geneva
Conference on Indochina, Cambodia was able to bring about the withdrawal
of the Viet Minh troops from its territory and to withstand any residual
impingement upon its sovereignty by external powers.
In order to play a more active role in national politics, Sihanouk
abdicated in 1955 and placed his father, Norodom Suramarit, on the
throne. Now only a prince, Sihanouk organized his own political
movement, the Popular Socialist Community, (Sangkum Reastr Niyum, or
Sangkum), which won all the seats in the National Assembly in the 1955
election. The Sangkum dominated the political scene until the late
1960s. Sihanouk's highly personal ruling style made him immensely
popular with the people, especially in rural villages. Although the
Sangkum was backed by conservative interests, Sihanouk included leftists
in his government, three of whom--Khieu Samphan, Hou Yuon, and Hu
Nim--later became leaders of the Khmer Rouge. In 1963 he announced the
nationalization of banking, foreign trade, and insurance in a socialist
experiment that dried up foreign investment and alienated the right
wing. In foreign relations, Sihanouk pursued a policy of neutrality and
nonalignment. He accepted United States economic and military aid, but
he also promoted close relations with China and attempted to keep on
good terms with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). The
principal objectives of his foreign policy were to preserve Cambodia's
independence and to keep the country out of the widening conflict in
neighboring Vietnam. Relations with Washington grew stormy in the early
1960s. In 1963 the prince rejected further United States aid, and, two
years later, he severed diplomatic relations.
Both the domestic and the international situations had deteriorated
by the late 1960s. The increasingly powerful right wing challenged
Sihanouk's control of the political system. Peasant resentment over
harsh tax collection measures and the expropriation of land to build a
sugar refinery led to a violent revolt in 1967 in the northwestern
province of Batdambang (Battambang). The armed forces, commanded by
General Lon Nol (who was also prime minister), quelled the revolt, but a
communist-led insurgency spread throughout the country. The spillover of
the Second Indochina War (or Vietnam War) into the Cambodian border
areas also was becoming a serious problem. Apparently one factor in
Sihanouk's decision to reestablish relations with Washington in 1969 was
his fear of further incursions by the North Vietnamese and the Viet
Cong. In March 1970, however, he was overthrown by General Lon Nol and
other right-wing leaders, who seven months later abolished the monarchy
and established the Khmer Republic.
The Khmer Republic faced not only North Vietnamese and Viet Cong
combat units but also an effective, homegrown communist movement that
grew more lethal as time went on. The Cambodian communists, whom
Sihanouk had labeled Khmer Rouge, traced their movement back to the
struggle for independence and the creation in 1951, under Vietnamese
auspices, of the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's Revolutionary Party
(KPRP). During the early 1960s, however, a group of Paris-trained
communist intellectuals, of whom the most important were Saloth Sar
(known as Pol Pot after 1976), Khieu Samphan, and Ieng Sary, seized
control of the party. They gradually purged or neutralized rivals whom
they considered too subservient to Vietnam. After the March 1970 coup d'état
that toppled Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge formed a united front with the
ousted leader, a move that won them the goodwill of peasants who were
still loyal to the prince.
Despite massive United States aid to the newly proclaimed Khmer
Republic and the bombing of North Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge
installations and troop concentrations in the countryside, the Phnom
Penh regime rapidly lost most of the country's territory to the
communists. In January 1975 communist forces laid siege to Phnom Penh,
and in succeeding months they tightened the noose around the capital. On
April 1, 1975, President Lon Nol left the country. Sixteen days later
Khmer Rouge troops entered the city.
The forty-four months the Khmer Rouge were in power was a period of
unmitigated suffering for the Khmer people. Although the severity of
revolutionary policies varied from region to region because of
ideological differences and the personal inclinations of local leaders,
hundreds of thousands of people starved, died from disease, or were
executed. "New people" (the intelligentsia and those from the
cities--those new to the rural areas), being considered politically
unreliable, were special targets of terror and of a harsh, unremitting
regime of forced labor. In 1977 Pol Pot launched a bloody purge within
the communist ranks that accounted for many deaths. The slaughter of the
Vietnamese minority living in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge's aggressive
incursions into Vietnam led to fighting with Vietnam in 1977 and 1978.
In December 1978, Vietnamese forces invaded the country. On January 7,
1979, they captured Phnom Penh and began to establish the People's
Republic of Kampuchea (PRK). The Khmer Rouge fled to isolated corners of
the country and resumed their guerrilla struggle, which continued in the
late 1980s.
Cambodia - PREHISTORY AND EARLY KINGDOMS
At about the time that the ancient peoples of Western Europe were
absorbing the classical culture and institutions of the Mediterranean,
the peoples of mainland and insular Southeast Asia were responding to
the stimulus of a civilization that had arisen in northern India during
the previous millennium. The Britons, Gauls, and Iberians experienced
Mediterranean influences directly, through conquest by and incorporation
into the Roman Empire. In contrast, the Indianization of Southeast Asia
was a slower process than the Romanization of Europe because there was
no period of direct Indian rule and because land and sea barriers that
separated the region from the Indian subcontinent are considerable.
Nevertheless, Indian religion, political thought, literature, mythology,
and artistic motifs gradually became integral elements in local
Southeast Asian cultures. The caste system never was adopted, but
Indianization stimulated the rise of highly-organized, centralized
states.
Funan, the earliest of the Indianized states, generally is considered
by Cambodians to have been the first Khmer kingdom in the area. Founded
in the first century A.D., Funan was located on the lower reaches of the
Mekong River in the delta area. Its capital, Vyadhapura, probably was
located near the present-day town of Phumi Banam in Prey Veng Province.
The earliest historical reference to Funan is a Chinese description of a
mission that visited the country in the third century A.D. The name
Funan derives from the Chinese rendition of the old Khmer word bnam
(meaning mountain). What the Funanese called themselves, however, is not
known.
During this early period in Funan's history, the population was
probably concentrated in villages along the Mekong River and along the
Tonle Sab River below the Tonle Sap. Traffic and communications were
mostly waterborne on the rivers and their delta tributaries. The area
was a natural region for the development of an economy based on fishing
and rice cultivation. There is considerable evidence that the Funanese
economy depended on rice surpluses produced by an extensive inland
irrigation system. Maritime trade also played an extremely important
role in the development of Funan. The remains of what is believed to
have been the kingdom's main port, Oc Eo (now part of Vietnam), contain
Roman as well as Persian, Indian, and Greek artifacts.
By the fifth century A.D., the state exercised control over the lower
Mekong River area and the lands around the Tonle Sap. It also commanded
tribute from smaller states in the area now comprising northern
Cambodia, southern Laos, southern Thailand, and the northern portion of
the Malay Peninsula.
Indianization was fostered by increasing contact with the
subcontinent through the travels of merchants, diplomats, and learned
Brahmans (Hindus of the highest caste traditionally assigned to the
priesthood). Indian immigrants, believed to have arrived in the fourth
and the fifth centuries, accelerated the process. By the fifth century,
the elite culture was thoroughly Indianized. Court ceremony and the
structure of political institutions were based on Indian models. The
Sanskrit language was widely used; the laws of Manu, the Indian legal
code, were adopted; and an alphabet based on Indian writing systems was
introduced.
Funan reached its zenith in the fifth century A.D.. Beginning in the
early sixth century, civil wars and dynastic strife undermined Funan's
stability, making it relatively easy prey to incursions by hostile
neighbors. By the end of the seventh century, a northern neighbor, the
kingdom of Chenla, had reduced Funan to a vassal state.
Cambodia - The Successor State of Chenla
The Angkorian period lasted from the early ninth century to the early
fifteenth century A.D. In terms of cultural accomplishments and
political power, this was the golden age of Khmer civilization. The
great temple cities of the Angkorian region, located near the modern
town of Siemreab, are a lasting monument to the greatness of Jayavarman
II's successors. (Even the Khmer Rouge, who looked on most of their
country's past history and traditions with hostility, adopted a stylized
Angkorian temple for the flag of Democratic Kampuchea. A similar motif
is found in the flag of the PRK). The kingdom founded by Jayavarman II
also gave modern-day Cambodia, or Kampuchea, its name. During the early
ninth to the mid-fifteenth centuries, it was known as Kambuja,
originally the name of an early north Indian state, from which the
current forms of the name have been derived.
Possibly to put distance between himself and the seaborne Javanese,
Jayavarman II settled north of the Tonle Sap. He built several capitals
before establishing one, Hariharalaya, near the site where the Angkorian
complexes were built. Indravarman I (A.D. 877-89) extended Khmer control
as far west as the Korat Plateau in Thailand, and he ordered the
construction of a huge reservoir north of the capital to provide
irrigation for wet rice cultivation. His son, Yasovarman I (A.D.
889-900), built the Eastern Baray (reservoir or tank), evidence of which
remains to the present time. Its dikes, which may be seen today, are
more than 6 kilometers long and 1.6 kilometers wide. The elaborate
system of canals and reservoirs built under Indravarman I and his
successors were the key to Kambuja's prosperity for half a millennium.
By freeing cultivators from dependence on unreliable seasonal monsoons,
they made possible an early "green revolution" that provided
the country with large surpluses of rice. Kambuja's decline during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries probably was hastened by the
deterioration of the irrigation system. Attacks by Thai and other
foreign peoples and the internal discord caused by dynastic rivalries
diverted human resources from the system's upkeep, and it gradually fell
into disrepair.
Suryavarman II (1113-50), one of the greatest Angkorian monarchs,
expanded his kingdom's territory in a series of successful wars against
the kingdom of Champa in central Vietnam, the kingdom of Nam Viet in
northern Vietnam, and the small Mon polities as far west as the
Irrawaddy River of Burma. He reduced to vassalage the Thai peoples who
had migrated into Southeast Asia from the Yunnan region of southern
China and established his suzerainty over the northern part of the Malay
Peninsula. His greatest achievement was the construction of the temple
city complex of Angkor Wat. The largest religious edifice in the world,
Angkor Wat is considered the greatest single architectural work in
Southeast Asia. Suryavarman II's reign was followed, however, by thirty
years of dynastic upheaval and an invasion by the neighboring Cham, who destroyed the city of Angkor in 1177.
The Cham ultimately were driven out and conquered by Jayavarman VII,
whose reign (1181-ca. 1218) marked the apogee of Kambuja's power. Unlike
his predecessors, who had adopted the cult of the Hindu god-king,
Jayavarman VII was a fervent patron of Mahayana Buddhism. Casting
himself as a bodhisattva, he embarked on a frenzy of building activity that
included the Angkor Thom complex and the Bayon, a remarkable temple
whose stone towers depict 216 faces of buddhas, gods, and kings. He also
built over 200 rest houses and hospitals throughout his kingdom. Like
the Roman emperors, he maintained a system of roads between his capital
and provincial towns. According to historian George Coedès, "No
other Cambodian king can claim to have moved so much stone." Often,
quality suffered for the sake of size and rapid construction, as is
revealed in the intriguing but poorly constructed Bayon.
Carvings show that everyday Angkorian buildings were wooden
structures not much different from those found in Cambodia today. The
impressive stone buildings were not used as residences by members of the
royal family. Rather, they were the focus of Hindu or Buddhist cults
that celebrated the divinity, or buddhahood, of the monarch and his
family. Coedès suggests that they had the dual function of both temple
and tomb. Typically, their dimensions reflected the structure of the
Hindu mythological universe. For example, five towers at the center of
the Angkor Wat complex represent the peaks of Mount Meru, the center of
the universe; an outer wall represents the mountains that ring the
world's edge; and a moat depicts the cosmic ocean. Like many other
ancient edifices, the monuments of the Angkorian region absorbed vast
reserves of resources and human labor and their purpose remains shrouded
in mystery.
Angkorian society was strictly hierarchical. The king, regarded as
divine, owned both the land and his subjects. Immediately below the
monarch and the royal family were the Brahman priesthood and a small
class of officials, who numbered about 4,000 in the tenth century. Next
were the commoners, who were burdened with heavy corvée (forced labor)
duties. There was also a large slave class that, like the nameless
multitudes of ancient Egypt, built the enduring monuments.
After Jayavarman VII's death, Kambuja entered a long period of
decline that led to its eventual disintegration. The Thai were a growing
menace on the empire's western borders. The spread of Theravada
Buddhism, which came to Kambuja from Sri Lanka by way of the Mon
kingdoms, challenged the royal Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist cults.
Preaching austerity and the salvation of the individual through his or
own her efforts, Theravada Buddhism did not lend doctrinal support to a
society ruled by an opulent royal establishment maintained through the
virtual slavery of the masses.
In 1353 a Thai army captured Angkor. It was recaptured by the Khmer,
but wars continued and the capital was looted several times. During the
same period, Khmer territory north of the present Laotian border was
lost to the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang. In 1431 the Thai captured Angkor
Thom. Thereafter, the Angkorian region did not again encompass a royal
capital, except for a brief period in the third quarter of the sixteenth
century.
Cambodia - CAMBODIA'S STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL, 1432-1887
The more than four centuries that passed from the abandonment of
Angkor around the mid-fifteenth century to the establishment of a
protectorate under the French in 1863 are considered by historians to be
Cambodia's "dark ages," a period of economic, social, and
cultural stagnation when the kingdom's internal affairs came
increasingly under the control of its aggressive neighbors, the Thai and
the Vietnamese. By the mid-nineteenth century, Cambodia had become an
almost helpless pawn in the power struggles between Thailand and Vietnam
and probably would have been completely absorbed by one or the other if
France had not intervened, giving Cambodia a colonially dominated
"lease on life." Fear of racial and cultural extinction has
persisted as a major theme in modern Cambodian thought and helps to
explain the intense nationalism and xenophobia of the Khmer Rouge during
the 1970s. Establishment in 1979 of the People's Republic of Kampuchea,
a Vietnamese-dominated satellite state, can be seen as the culmination
of a process of Vietnamese encroachment that was already well under way
by the seventeenth century.
The process of internal decay and foreign encroachment was gradual
rather than precipitous and was hardly evident in the fifteenth century
when the Khmer were still powerful. Following the fall of Angkor Thom,
the Cambodian court abandoned the region north of the Tonle Sap, never
to return except for a brief interlude in the late sixteenth century. By
this time however, the Khmer penchant for monument building had ceased.
Older faiths such as Mahayana Buddhism and the Hindu cult of the
god-king had been supplanted by Theravada Buddhism, and the Cambodians
had become part of the same religious and cultural cosmos as the Thai.
This similarity did not prevent intermittent warfare between the two
kingdoms, however. During the sixteenth century Cambodian armies, taking
advantage of Thai troubles with the Burmese, invaded the Thai kingdom
several times.
In the meantime, following the abandonment of the Angkorian sites,
the Khmer established a new capital several hundred kilometers to the
southeast on the site of what is now Phnom Penh. This new center of
power was located at the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle Sab
rivers. Thus, it controlled the river commerce of the Khmer heartland
and the Laotian kingdoms and had access, by way of the Mekong Delta, to
the international trade routes that linked the China coast, the South
China Sea, and the Indian Ocean. A new kind of state and society
emerged, more open to the outside world and more dependent on commerce
as a source of wealth than its inland predecessor. The growth of
maritime trade with China during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) provided
lucrative opportunities for members of the Cambodian elite who
controlled royal trading monopolies. The appearance of Europeans in the
region in the sixteenth century also stimulated commerce.
King Ang Chan (1516-66), one of the few great Khmer monarchs of the
post-Angkorian period, moved the capital from Phnom Penh to Lovek.
Portuguese and Spanish travelers who visited the city, located on the
banks of the Tonle Sab, a river north of Phnom Penh, described it as a
place of fabulous wealth. The products traded there included precious
stones, metals, silk and cotton, incense, ivory, lacquer, livestock
(including elephants), and rhinoceros horn (prized by the Chinese as a
rare and potent medicine). By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries, Lovek contained flourishing foreign trading communities of
Chinese, Indonesians, Malays, Japanese, Arabs, Spanish, and Portuguese.
They were joined later in the century by the English and the Dutch.
Because the representatives of practically all these nationalities
were pirates, adventurers, or traders, this was an era of stormy
cosmopolitanism. Hard-pressed by the Thai, King Sattha (1576-94)
surrounded himself with a personal guard of Spanish and Portuguese
mercenaries, and in 1593 asked the Spanish governor of the Philippines
for aid. Attracted by the prospects of establishing a Spanish
protectorate in Cambodia and of converting the monarch to Christianity,
the governor sent a force of 120 men, but Lovek had already fallen to
the Thai when they arrived the following year. The Spanish took
advantage of the extremely confused situation to place one of Sattha's
sons on the throne in 1597. Hopes of making the country a Spanish
dependency were dashed, however, when the Spaniards were massacred two
years later by an equally belligerent contingent of Malay mercenaries.
The Thai, however, had dealt a fatal blow to Cambodian independence
by capturing Lovek in 1594. With the posting of a Thai military governor
in the city, a degree of foreign political control was established over
the kingdom for the first time. Cambodian chronicles describe the fall
of Lovek as a catastrophe from which the nation never fully recovered.
Cambodia - Domination by Thailand and by Vietnam
More than their conquest of Angkor a century and a half earlier, the
Thai capture of Lovek marked the beginning of a decline in Cambodia's
fortunes. One possible reason for the decline was the labor drain
imposed by the Thai conquerors as they marched thousands of Khmer
peasants, skilled artisans, scholars, and members of the Buddhist clergy
back to their capital of Ayutthaya. This practice, common in the history
of Southeast Asia, crippled Cambodia's ability to recover a semblance of
its former greatness. A new Khmer capital was established at Odongk
(Udong), south of Lovek, but its monarchs could survive only by entering
into what amounted to vassal relationships with the Thai and with the
Vietnamese. In common parlance, Thailand became Cambodia's
"father" and Vietnam its "mother."
By the late fifteenth century, the Vietnamese--who, unlike other
Southeast Asian peoples, had patterned their culture and their
civilization on those of China--had defeated the oncepowerful kingdom of
Champa in central Vietnam. Thousands of Chams fled into Khmer territory.
By the early seventeenth century, the Vietnamese had reached the Mekong
Delta, which was inhabited by Khmer people. In 1620 the Khmer king Chey
Chettha II (1618-28) married a daughter of Sai Vuong, one of the Nguyen
lords (1558- 1778), who ruled southern Vietnam for most of the period of
the restored Le dynasty (1428-1788). Three years later, Chey Chettha
allowed the Vietnamese to establish a custom-house at Prey Nokor, near
what is now Ho Chi Minh City (until 1975, Saigon). By the end of the
seventeenth century, the region was under Vietnamese administrative
control, and Cambodia was cut off from access to the sea. Trade with the
outside world was possible only with Vietnamese permission.
There were periods in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries,
when Cambodia's neighbors were preoccupied with internal or external
strife, that afforded the beleaguered country a breathing spell. The
Vietnamese were involved in a lengthy civil war until 1674, but upon its
conclusion they promptly annexed sizable areas of contiguous Cambodian
territory in the region of the Mekong Delta. For the next one hundred
years they used the alleged mistreatment of Vietnamese colonists in the
delta as a pretext for their continued expansion. By the end of the
eighteenth century, they had extended their control to include the area
encompassed in the late 1980s by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
(Vietnam).
Thailand, which might otherwise have been courted as an ally against
Vietnamese incursions in the eighteenth century, was itself involved in
a new conflict with Burma. In 1767 the Thai capital of Ayutthaya was
besieged and destroyed. The Thai quickly recovered, however, and soon
reasserted their dominion over Cambodia. The youthful Khmer king, Ang
Eng (1779-96), a refugee at the Thai court, was installed as monarch at
Odongk by Thai troops. At the same time, Thailand quietly annexed
Cambodia's three northernmost provinces. In addition, the local rulers
of the northwestern provinces of Batdambang and Siemreab (Siemreap)
became vassals of the Thai king, and these areas came under the Thai
sphere of influence.
A renewed struggle between Thailand and Vietnam for control of
Cambodia in the nineteenth century resulted in a period when Vietnamese
officials, working through a puppet Cambodian king, ruled the central
part of the country and attempted to force Cambodians to adopt
Vietnamese customs. Several rebellions against Vietnamese rule ensued.
The most important of these occurred in 1840 to 1841 and spread through
much of the country. After two years of fighting, Cambodia and its two
neighbors reached an accord that placed the country under the joint
suzerainty of Thailand and Vietnam. At the behest of both countries, a
new monarch, Ang Duong (1848-59), ascended the throne and brought a
decade of peace and relative independence to Cambodia.
In their arbitrary treatment of the Khmer population, the Thai and
the Vietnamese were virtually indistinguishable. The suffering and the
dislocation caused by war were comparable in many ways to similar
Cambodian experiences in the 1970s. But the Thai and the Vietnamese had
fundamentally different attitudes concerning their relationships with
Cambodia. The Thai shared with the Khmer a common religion, mythology,
literature, and culture. The Chakri kings at Bangkok wanted Cambodia's
loyalty and tribute, but they had no intention of challenging or
changing its people's values or way of life. The Vietnamese viewed the
Khmer people as barbarians to be civilized through exposure to
Vietnamese culture, and they regarded the fertile Khmer lands as
legitimate sites for colonization by settlers from Vietnam.
Cambodia - The French Protectorate
France's interest in Indochina in the nineteenth century grew out of
its rivalry with Britain, which had excluded it from India and had
effectively shut it out of other parts of mainland Southeast Asia. The
French also desired to establish commerce in a region that promised so
much untapped wealth and to redress the Vietnamese state's persecution
of Catholic converts, whose welfare was a stated aim of French overseas
policy. The Nguyen dynasty's repeated refusal to establish diplomatic
relations and the violently anti-Christian policies of the emperors Minh
Mang (1820- 41), Thieu Tri (1841-47), and Tu Duc (1848-83) impelled the
French to engage in gunboat diplomacy that resulted, in 1862, in the
establishment of French dominion over Saigon and over the three eastern
provinces of the Cochinchina (Mekong Delta) region.
In the view of the government in Paris, Cambodia was a promising
backwater. Persuaded by a missionary envoy to seek French protection
against both the Thai and the Vietnamese, King Ang Duong invited a
French diplomatic mission to visit his court. The Thai, however,
pressured him to refuse to meet with the French when they finally
arrived at Odongk in 1856. The much-publicized travels of the naturalist
Henri Mouhot, who visited the Cambodian court, rediscovered the ruins at
Angkor, and journeyed up the Mekong River to the Laotian kingdom of
Luang Prabang from 1859 to 1861, piqued French interest in the kingdom's
alleged vast riches and in the value of the Mekong as a gateway to
China's southwestern provinces. In August 1863, the French concluded a
treaty with Ang Duong's successor, Norodom (1859-1904). This agreement
afforded the Cambodian monarch French protection (in the form of a
French official called a résident--in French resident) in exchange for
giving the French rights to explore and to exploit the kingdom's mineral
and forest resources. Norodom's coronation, in 1864, was an awkward
affair at which both French and Thai representatives officiated.
Although the Thai attempted to thwart the expansion of French influence,
their own influence over the monarch steadily dwindled. In 1867 the
French concluded a treaty with the Thai that gave the latter control of
Batdambang Province and of Siemreab Province in exchange for their
renunciation of all claims of suzerainty over other parts of Cambodia.
Loss of the northwestern provinces deeply upset Norodom, but he was
beholden to the French for sending military aid to suppress a rebellion
by a royal pretender.
In June 1884, the French governor of Cochinchina went to Phnom Penh,
Norodom's capital, and demanded approval of a treaty with Paris that
promised far-reaching changes such as the abolition of slavery, the
institution of private land ownership, and the establishment of French résidents
in provincial cities. Mindful of a French gunboat anchored in the river,
the king reluctantly signed the agreement. Local elites opposed its
provisions, however, especially the one dealing with slavery, and they
fomented rebellions throughout the country during the following year.
Though the rebellions were suppressed, and the treaty was ratified,
passive resistance on the part of the Cambodians postponed
implementation of the reforms it embodied until after Norodom's death.
Cambodia - THE FRENCH COLONIAL PERIOD, 1887-1953
Soon after establishing their protectorate in 1863, the French
realized that Cambodia's hidden wealth was an illusion and that Phnom
Penh would never become the Singapore of Indochina. Aside from
collecting taxes more efficiently, the French did little to transform
Cambodia's village-based economy. Cambodians paid the highest taxes per
capita in Indochina, and in 1916 a nonviolent tax revolt brought tens of
thousands of peasants into Phnom Penh to petition the king for a
reduction. The incident shocked the French, who had lulled themselves
into believing that the Cambodians were too indolent and individualistic
to organize a mass protest. Taxes continued to be sorely resented by the
Cambodians. In 1925 villagers killed a French resident after he
threatened to arrest tax delinquents. For poor peasants, the corvée
service--a tax substitute--of as many as ninety days a year on public
works projects, was an onerous duty.
According to Hou Yuon (a veteran of the communist movement who was
murdered by the Khmer Rouge after they seized power in 1975), usury vied
with taxes as the chief burden upon the peasantry. Hou's 1955 doctoral
thesis at the University of Paris was one of the earliest and most
thorough studies of conditions in the rural areas during the French
colonial era. He argued that although most landholdings were small (one
to five hectares), poor and middleclass peasants were victims of
flagrantly usurious practices that included effective interest rates of
100 to 200 percent. Foreclosure reduced them to the status of
sharecroppers or landless laborers. Although debt slavery and feudal
landholding patterns had been abolished by the French, the old elites
still controlled the countryside. According to Hou, "the great
feudal farms, because of their precapitalist character, are disguised as
small and mediumsized farms, in the form of tenancies and share-farms,
and materially are indistinguishable from other small and medium-seized
farms." Whether or not the countryside was as polarized in terms of
class (or property) as Hou argues is open to debate, but it is clear
that great tension and conflict existed despite the smiles and the
easygoing manner of Khmer villagers.
To develop the economic infrastructure, the French built a limited
number of roads and a railroad that extended from Phnom Penh through
Batdambang to the Thai border. The cultivation of rubber and of corn
were economically important, and the fertile provinces of Batdambang and
Siemreab became the rice baskets of Indochina. The prosperous 1920s,
when rubber, rice, and corn were in demand overseas, were years of
considerable economic growth, but the world depression after 1929 caused
great suffering, especially among rice cultivators whose falling incomes
made them more than ever the victims of moneylenders.
Industry was rudimentary and was designed primarily to process raw
materials such as rubber for local use or export. There was considerable
immigration, which created a plural society similar to those of other
Southeast Asian countries. As in British Burma and Malaya, foreigners
dominated the developed sectors of the economy. Vietnamese came to serve
as laborers on rubber plantations and as clerical workers in the
government. As their numbers increased, Vietnamese immigrants also began
to play important roles in the economy as fishermen and as operators of
small businesses. The Chinese had been in Cambodia for several centuries
before the imposition of French rule, and they had dominated precolonial
commerce. This arrangement continued under the French, because the
colonial government placed no restrictions on the occupations in which
they could engage. Chinese merchants and bankers in Cambodia developed
commercial networks that extended throughout Indochina as well as
overseas to other parts of Southeast Asia and to mainland China.
Cambodia - The Emergence of Nationalism
In stark contrast to neighboring Cochinchina and to the other
Vietnamese-populated territories of Indochina, Cambodia was relatively
quiescent politically during the first four decades of the twentieth
century. The carefully maintained fiction of royal rule was probably the
major factor. Khmer villagers, long inured to abuses of power, believed
that as long as a monarch occupied the throne "all was right with
the world." Low literacy rates, which the French were extremely
reluctant to improve, also insulated the great majority of the
population from the nationalist currents that were sweeping other parts
of Southeast Asia.
Nevertheless, national consciousness was emerging among the handful
of educated Khmer who composed the urban-based elite. Restoration of the
monuments at Angkor, which the historian David P. Chandler suggests was
France's most valuable legacy to the colony, awakened Cambodians' pride
in their culture and in their past achievements. Many of the new elite
were graduates of the Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh, where resentment of
the favored treatment given Vietnamese students resulted in a petition
to King Monivong during the 1930s. Significantly, the most articulate of
the early nationalists, were Khmer Krom --members of the Cambodian minority who lived in Cochinchina. In
1936 Son Ngoc Thanh and another Khmer Krom named Pach Chhoeun, began
publishing Nagaravatta (Angkor Wat), the first Khmerlanguage
newspaper. In its editorials, Nagaravatta mildly condemned
French colonial policies, the prevalence of usury in the rural areas,
foreign domination of the economy, and the lack of opportunities for
educated Khmer. Much of the paper's journalistic wrath was directed
toward the Vietnamese for their past exploitation of Cambodia and for
their contemporary monopolization of civil service and of professional
positions.
The Khmer were fortunate in escaping the suffering endured by most
other Southeast Asian peoples during World War II. After the
establishment of the Vichy regime in France in 1940, Japanese forces
moved into Vietnam and displaced French authority. In mid1941 , they
entered Cambodia but allowed Vichy French colonial officials to remain
at their administrative posts. The pro-Japanese regime in Thailand,
headed by Prime Minister Field Marshal Luang Plaek Phibunsonggram,
requested assurances from the Vicky regime that, in the event of an
interruption of French sovereignty, Cambodian and Laotian territories
formerly belong to Thailand would be returned to Bangkoh's authority.
The request was rejected. In January 1941, a Thai force invaded
Cambodia. The land fighting was indecisive, but the Vichy French
defeated the Thai navy in an engagement in the Gulf of Thailand. At this point, Tokyo intervened and
compelled the French authorities to agree to a treaty ceding the
province of Batdambang and part of the province of Siemreab to Thailand
in exchange for a small compensation. The Cambodians were allowed to
retain Angkor. Thai aggression, however, had minimal impact on the lives
of most Cambodians outside the northwestern region.
King Monivong died in April 1941. Although his son, Prince Monireth,
had been considered the heir apparent, the French chose instead Norodom
Sihanouk, the great grandson of King Norodom. Sihanouk was an ideal
candidate from their point of view because of his youth (he was nineteen
years old), his lack of experience, and his pliability.
Japanese calls of "Asia for the Asiatics" found a receptive
audience among Cambodian nationalists, although Tokyo's policy in
Indochina was to leave the colonial government nominally in charge. When
a prominent, politically active Buddhist monk, Hem Chieu, was arrested
and unceremoniously defrocked by the French authorities in July 1942,
the editors of Nagaravatta led a demonstration demanding his
release. They as well as other nationalists apparently overestimated the
Japanese willingness to back them, for the Vichy authorities quickly
arrested the demonstrators and gave Pach Chhoeun, one of the Nagaravatta
editors, a life sentence. The other editor, Son Ngoc Thanh, escaped from
Phnom Penh and turned up the following year in Tokyo.
In a desperate effort to enlist local support in the final months of
the war, the Japanese dissolved the French colonial administration on
March 9, 1945, and urged Cambodia to declare its independence within the
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Four days later, King Sihanouk
decreed an independent Kampuchea (the original Khmer pronunciation of
Cambodia). Son Ngoc Thanh returned from Tokyo in May, and he was
appointed foreign minister. On August 15, 1945, the day Japan
surrendered, a new government was established with Son Ngoc Thanh acting
as prime minister. When an Allied force occupied Phnom Penh in October,
Thanh was arrested for collaboration with the Japanese and was sent into
exile in France to remain under house arrest. Some of his supporters
went to northwestern Cambodia, then still under Thai control, where they
banded together as one faction in the Khmer Issarak movement, originally
formed with Thai encouragement in the 1940s.
Cambodia - The Struggle for Independence
Cambodia's situation at the end of the war was chaotic. The Free
French, under General Charles de Gaulle, were determined to recover
Indochina, though they offered Cambodia and the other Inchochinese
protectorates a carefully circumscribed measure of self-government.
Convinced that they had a "civilizing mission," they
envisioned Indochina's participation in a French Union of former
colonies that shared the common experience of French culture. Neither
the urban professional elites nor the common people, however, were
attracted by this arrangement. For Cambodians of practically all walks
of life, the brief period of independence, from March to October of
1945, was an invigorating breath of fresh air. The lassitude of the
Khmer was a thing of the past.
In Phnom Penh, Sihanouk, acting as head of state, was placed in the
extremely delicate position of negotiating with the French for full
independence while trying to neutralize party politicians and supporters
of the Khmer Issarak and Viet Minh who considered him a French
collaborator. During the tumultuous period between 1946 and 1953,
Sihanouk displayed the remarkable aptitude for political survival that
sustained him before and after his fall from power in March 1970. The
Khmer Issarak was an extremely heterogeneous guerrilla movement,
operating in the border areas. The group included indigenous leftists,
Vietnamese leftists, antimonarchical nationalists (Khmer Serei) loyal to Son Ngoc Thanh, and plain bandits taking advantage of
the chaos to terrorize villagers. Though their fortunes rose and fell
during the immediate postwar period (a major blow was the overthrow of a
friendly leftist government in Bangkok in 1947), by 1954 the Khmer
Issarak operating with the Viet Minh by some estimates controlled as
much as 50 percent of Cambodia's territory.
In 1946 the French allowed the Cambodians to form political parties
and to hold elections for a Consultative Assembly that would advise the
monarch on drafting the country's constitution. The two major parties
were both headed by royal princes. The Democratic Party, led by Prince
Sisowath Yuthevong, espoused immediate independence, democratic reforms,
and parliamentary government. Its supporters were teachers, civil
servants, politically active members of the Buddhist priesthood, and
others whose opinions had been greatly influenced by the nationalistic
appeals of Nagaravatta before it was closed down by the French
in 1942. Many Democrats sympathized with the violent methods of the
Khmer Issarak. The Liberal Party, led by Prince Norodom Norindeth,
represented the interests of the old rural elites, including large
landowners. They preferred continuing some form of the colonial
relationship with France, and advocated gradual democratic reform. In
the Consultative Assembly election held in September 1946, the Democrats
won fifty out of sixty-seven seats.
With a solid majority in the assembly, the Democrats drafted a
constitution modeled on that of the French Fourth Republic. Power was
concentrated in the hands of a popularly elected National Assembly. The
king reluctantly proclaimed the new constitution on May 6, 1947. While
it recognized him as the "spiritual head of the state," it
reduced him to the status of a constitutional monarch, and it left
unclear the extent to which he could play an active role in the politics
of the nation. Sihanouk would turn this ambiguity to his advantage in
later years, however.
In the December 1947 elections for the National Assembly, the
Democrats again won a large majority. Despite this, dissension within
the party was rampant. Its founder, Prince Yuthevong, had died and no
clear leader had emerged to succeed him. During the period 1948 to 1949,
the Democrats appeared united only in their opposition to legislation
sponsored by the king or his appointees. A major issue was the king's
receptivity to independence within the French Union, proposed in a draft
treaty offered by the French in late 1948. Following dissolution of the
National Assembly in September 1949, agreement on the pact was reached
through an exchange of letters between King Sihanouk and the French
government. It went into effect two months later, though National
Assembly ratification of the treaty was never secured.
The treaty granted Cambodia what Sihanouk called "fifty percent
independence": by it, the colonial relationship was formally ended,
and the Cambodians were given control of most administrative functions.
Cambodian armed forces were granted freedom of action within a
self-governing autonomous zone comprising Batdambang and Siemreab
provinces, which had been recovered from Thailand after World War II,
but which the French, hard-pressed elsewhere, did not have the resources
to control. Cambodia was still required to coordinate foreign policy
matters with the High Council of the French Union, however, and France
retained a significant measure of control over the judicial system,
finances, and customs. Control of wartime military operations outside
the autonomous zone remained in French hands. France was also permitted
to maintain military bases on Cambodian territory. In 1950 Cambodia was
accorded diplomatic recognition by the United States and by most
noncommunist powers, but in Asia only Thailand and the Republic of Korea
(South Korea) extended recognition.
The Democrats won a majority in the second National Assembly election
in September 1951, and they continued their policy of opposing the king
on practically all fronts. In an effort to win greater popular approval,
Sihanouk asked the French to release nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh from
exile and to allow him to return to his country. He made a triumphant
entry into Phnom Penh on October 29, 1951. It was not long, however,
before he began demanding withdrawal of French troops from Cambodia. He
reiterated this demand in early 1952 in Khmer Krok (Khmer
Awake!) a weekly newspaper that he had founded. The newspaper was forced
to cease publication in March, and Son Ngoc Thanh fled the capital with
a few armed followers to join the Khmer Issarak. Branded alternately a
communist and an agent of the United States Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) by Sihanouk, he remained in exile until Lon Nol established the
Khmer Republic in 1970.
In June 1952, Sihanouk announced the dismissal of his cabinet,
suspended the constitution, and assumed control of the government as
prime minister. Then, without clear constitutional sanction, he
dissolved the National Assembly and proclaimed martial law in January
1953. Sihanouk exercised direct rule for almost three years, from June
1952 until February 1955. After dissolution of the assembly, he created
an Advisory Council to supplant the legislature and appointed his
father, Norodom Suramarit, as regent.
In March 1953, Sihanouk went to France. Ostensibly, he was traveling
for his health; actually, he was mounting an intensive campaign to
persuade the French to grant complete independence. The climate of
opinion in Cambodia at the time was such that if he did not achieve full
independence quickly, the people were likely to turn to Son Ngoc Thanh
and the Khmer Issarak, who were fully committed to attaining that goal.
At meetings with the French president and with other high officials, the
French suggested that Sihanouk was unduly "alarmist" about
internal political conditions. The French also made the thinly veiled
threat that, if he continued to be uncooperative, they might replace
him. The trip appeared to be a failure, but on his way home by way of
the United States, Canada, and Japan, Sihanouk publicized Cambodia's
plight in the media.
To further dramatize his "royal crusade for independence,"
Sihanouk, declaring that he would not return until the French gave
assurances that full independence would be granted, left Phnom Penh in
June to go into self-imposed exile in Thailand. Unwelcome in Bangkok, he
moved to his royal villa near the ruins of Angkor in Siemreab Province.
Siemreab, part of the autonomous military zone established in 1949, was
commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Lon Nol, formerly a right-wing
politician who was becoming a prominent, and in time would be an
indispensable, Sihanouk ally within the military. From his Siemreab
base, the king and Lon Nol contemplated plans for resistance if the
French did not meet their terms.
Sihanouk was making a high-stakes gamble, for the French could easily
have replaced him with a more pliable monarch; however, the military
situation was deteriorating throughout Indochina, and the French
government, on July 3, 1953, declared itself ready to grant full
independence to the three states of Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos.
Sihanouk insisted on his own terms, which included full control of
national defense, the police, the courts, and financial matters. The
French yielded: the police and the judiciary were transferred to
Cambodian control at the end of August, and in October the country
assumed full command of its military forces. King Sihanouk, now a hero
in the eyes of his people, returned to Phnom Penh in triumph, and
independence day was celebrated on November 9, 1953. Control of residual
matters affecting sovereignty, such as financial and budgetary affairs,
passed to the new Cambodian state in 1954.
Cambodia - CAMBODIA UNDER SIHANOUK, 1954-70
Sihanouk continues to be one of the most controversial figures in
Southeast Asia's turbulent, and often tragic, postwar history. Admirers
view him as one of the country's great patriots, whose insistence on
strict neutrality kept Cambodia out of the maelstrom of war and out of
the revolution in neighboring Vietnam for more than fifteen years before
he was betrayed by his close associate, Lon Nol. Critics attack him for
his vanity, eccentricities, and intolerance of any political views
different from his own. One such critic, Michael Vickery, asserts that
beneath the neutralist rhetoric Sihanouk presided over a regime that was
oppressively reactionary and, in some instances, as violent in its
suppression of political opposition as the Khmer Rouge. According to
Vickery, the royal armed forces under Lon Nol slaughtered women and
children in pro-Khmer Issarak regions of Batdambang in 1954 using
methods that were later to become routine under Pol Pot. Another
critical observer, Milton E. Osborne, writing as an Australian
expatriate in Phnom Penh during the late 1960s, describes the Sihanouk
years in terms of unbridled greed and corruption, of a foreign policy
inspired more by opportunism than by the desire to preserve national
independence, of an economy and a political system that were rapidly
coming apart, and of the prince's obsession with making outrageously
mediocre films--one of which starred himself and his wife, Princess
Monique.
Sihanouk was all of these things--patriot, neutralist, embodiment of
the nation's destiny, eccentric, rigid defender of the status quo, and
promoter of the worst sort of patron-client politics. He believed that
he single-handedly had won Cambodia's independence from the French. The
contributions of other nationalists, such as Son Ngoc Thanh and the Viet
Minh, were conveniently forgotten. Sihanouk also believed he had the
right to run the state in a manner not very different from that of the
ancient Khmer kings--that is, as an extension of his household. Unlike
the ancient "god-kings," however, he established genuine
rapport with ordinary Cambodians. He made frequent, often impromptu,
trips throughout the country, visiting isolated villages, chatting with
peasants, receiving petitions, passing out gifts, and scolding officials
for mismanagement. According to British author and journalist William
Shawcross, Sihanouk was able to create a "unique brand of personal
populism." To ordinary Cambodians, his eccentricities, volatility,
short temper, sexual escapades, and artistic flights of fancy were an
expression of royal charisma rather than an occasion for scandal.
Sihanouk's delight in making life difficult for foreign diplomats and
journalists, moreover, amused his subjects. Ultimately, the eccentric
humanity of Sihanouk was to contrast poignantly with the random
brutality of his Khmer Rouge successors.
Cambodia - The Geneva Conference
Although Cambodia had achieved independence by late 1953, its
military situation remained unsettled. Noncommunist factions of the
Khmer Issarak had joined the government, but communist Viet Minh
activities increased at the very time French Union force were stretched
thin elsewhere. In April 1954, several Viet Minh battalions crossed the
border into Cambodia. Royalist forces engaged them but could not force
their complete withdrawal. In part, the communists were attempting to
strengthen their bargaining position at the Geneva Conference that had
been scheduled to begin in late April.
The Geneva Conference was attended by representatives of Cambodia,
North Vietnam, the Associated State of Vietnam (the predecessor of the
Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam), Laos, the People's Republic of
China, the Soviet Union, France, Britain, and the United States. One
goal of the conference was to restore a lasting peace in Indochina. The
discussions on Indochina began on May 8, 1954. The North Vietnamese
attempted to get representation for the resistance government that had
been established in the south, but failed. On July 21, 1954, the
conference reached an agreement calling for a cessation of hostilities
in Indochina. With respect to Cambodia, the agreement stipulated that
all Viet Minh military forces be withdrawn within ninety days and that
Cambodian resistance forces be demobilized within thirty days. In a
separate agreement signed by the Cambodian representative, the French
and the Viet Minh agreed to withdraw all forces from Cambodian soil by
October 1954.
In exchange for the withdrawal of Viet Minh forces, the communist
representatives in Geneva wanted full neutrality for Cambodia and for
Laos that would prevent the basing of United States military forces in
these countries. On the eve of the conference's conclusion, however, the
Cambodian representative, Sam Sary, insisted that, if Cambodia were to
be genuinely independent, it must not be prohibited from seeking
whatever military assistance it desired (Cambodia had earlier appealed
to Washington for military aid). The conference accepted this point over
North Vietnam's strenuous objections. In the final agreement, Cambodia
accepted a watered-down neutrality, vowing not to join any military
alliance "not in conformity with the principles of the Charter of
the United Nations" or to allow the basing of foreign military
forces on its territory "as long as its security is not
threatened."
The conference agreement established the International Control
Commission (officially called the International Commission for
Supervision and Control) in all the Indochinese countries. Made up of
representatives from Canada, Poland, and India, it supervised the
cease-fire, the withdrawal of foreign troops, the release of prisoners
of war, and overall compliance with the terms of the agreement. The
French and most of the Viet Minh forces were withdrawn on schedule in
October 1954.
Cambodia - Domestic Developments
The Geneva agreement also stipulated that general elections should be
held in Cambodia during 1955 and that the International Control
Commission should monitor them to ensure fairness. Sihanouk was more
determined than ever to defeat the Democrats (who, on the basis of their
past record, were expected to win the election). The king attempted
unsuccessfully to have the constitution amended. On March 2, 1955, he
announced his abdication in favor of his father, Norodom Suramarit.
Assuming the title of samdech (prince), Sihanouk explained that
this action was necessary in order to give him a free hand to engage in
politics.
To challenge the Democrats, Prince Sihanouk established his own
political machine, the oddly named Sangkum Reastr Niyum (Popular
Socialist Community), commonly referred to as the Sangkum. The name is
odd because its most important components were right-wing parties that
were virulently anticommunist. The Sangkum's emergence in early 1955
unified most right-wing groups under the prince's auspices. In the
September election, Sihanouk's new party decisively defeated the
Democrats, the Khmer Independence Party of Son Ngoc Thanh, and the
leftist Pracheachon (Citizens') Party, winning 83 percent of the vote
and all of the seats in the National Assembly.
Khmer nationalism, loyalty to the monarch, struggle against injustice
and corruption, and protection of the Buddhist religion were major
themes in Sangkum ideology. The party adopted a particularly
conservative interpretation of Buddhism, common in the Theravada
countries of Southeast Asia, that the social and economic inequalities
among people were legitimate because of the workings of karma. For the poorer classes, virtuous and obedient conduct opened
up the possibility of being born into a higher station in a future life.
The appeal to religion won the allegiance of the country's many Buddhist
priests, who were a particularly influential group in rural villages.
As the 1960s began, organized political opposition to Sihanouk and
the Sangkum virtually had disappeared. According to Vickery, the
Democratic Party disbanded in 1957 after its leaders--who had been
beaten by soldiers--requested the privilege of joining the Sangkum.
Despite its defense of the status quo, especially the interests of
rural elites, the Sangkum was not an exclusively right-wing
organization. Sihanouk included a number of leftists in his party and
government. Among these were future leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Hu Nim
and Hou Yuon served in several ministries between 1958 and 1963, and
Khieu Samphan served briefly as secretary of state for commerce in 1963.
Sihanouk's attitude toward the left was paradoxical. He often
declared that if he had not been a prince, he would have become a
revolutionary. Sihanouk's chronic suspicion of United States intentions
in the region, his perception of revolutionary China as Cambodia's most
valuable ally, his respect for such prominent and capable leftists as
Hou, Hu, and Khieu, and his vague notions of "royal socialism"
all impelled him to experiment with socialist policies. In 1963 the
prince announced the nationalization of banking, foreign trade, and
insurance as a means of reducing foreign control of the economy. In 1964
a state trading company, the National Export-Import Corporation, was
established to handle foreign commerce. The declared purposes of
nationalization were to give Khmer nationals, rather than Chinese or
Vietnamese, a greater role in the nation's trade, to eliminate middlemen
and to conserve foreign exchange through the limiting of unnecessary
luxury imports. As a result of this policy, foreign investment quickly
disappeared, and a kind of "crony socialism" emerged somewhat
similar to the "crony capitalism" that evolved in the
Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos. Lucrative state monopolies
were parceled out to Sihanouk's most loyal retainers, who
"milked" them for cash.
Sihanouk was headed steadily for a collision with the right. To
counter charges of one-man rule, the prince declared that he would
relinquish control of candidate selection and would permit more than one
Sangkum candidate to run for each seat in the September 1966 National
Assembly election. The returns showed a surprising upsurge in the
conservative vote at the expense of more moderate and left-wing
elements, although Hou, Hu, and Khieu were reelected by their
constituencies. General Lon Nol became prime minister.
Out of concern that the right wing might cause an irreparable split
within the Sangkum and might challenge his domination of the political
system, Sihanouk set up a "counter government" (like the
British "shadow cabinet") packed with his most loyal personal
followers and with leading leftists, hoping that it would exert a
restraining influence on Lon Nol. Leftists accused the general of being
groomed by Western intelligence agencies to lead a bloody anticommunist
coup d'état similar to that of General Soeharto in Indonesia. Injured
in an automobile accident, Lon Nol resigned in April 1967. Sihanouk
replaced him with a trusted centrist, Son Sann. This was the
twenty-third successive Sangkum cabinet and government to have been
appointed by Sihanouk since the party was formed in 1955.
Cambodia - Nonaligned Foreign Policy
Sihanouk's nonaligned foreign policy, which emerged in the months
following the Geneva Conference, cannot be understood without reference
to Cambodia's past history of foreign subjugation and its very uncertain
prospects for survival as the war between North Vietnam and South
Vietnam intensified. Soon after the 1954 Geneva Conference, Sihanouk
expressed some interest in integrating Cambodia into the framework of
the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), which included Cambodia,
Laos, and South Vietnam within the "treaty area," although
none of these states was a signatory. But meetings in late 1954 with
India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Burma's Premier U Nu made
him receptive to the appeal of nonalignment. Moreover, the prince was
somewhat uneasy about a United States-dominated alliance that included
one old enemy, Thailand, and encompassed another, South Vietnam, each of
which offered sanctuary to anti-Sihanouk dissidents.
At the Bandung Conference in April 1955, Sihanouk held private
meetings with Premier Zhou Enlai of China and Foreign Minister Pham Van
Dong of North Vietnam. Both assured him that their countries would
respect Cambodia's independence and territorial integrity. His
experience with the French, first as a client, then as the
self-proclaimed leader of the "royal crusade for
independence," apparently led him to conclude that the United
States, like France, would eventually be forced to leave Southeast Asia.
From this perspective, the Western presence in Indochina was only a
temporary interruption of the dynamics of the region--continued
Vietnamese (and perhaps even Thai) expansion at Cambodia's expense.
Accommodation with North Vietnam and friendly ties with China during the
late 1950s and the 1960s were tactics designed to counteract these
dynamics. China accepted Sihanouk's overtures and became a valuable
counterweight to growing Vietnamese and Thai pressure on Cambodia.
Cambodia's relations with China were based on mutual interests.
Sihanouk hoped that China would restrain the Vietnamese and the Thai
from acting to Cambodia's detriment. The Chinese, in turn, viewed
Cambodia's nonalignment as vital in order to prevent the encirclement of
their country by the United States and its allies. When Premier Zhou
Enlai visited Phnom Penh in 1956, he asked the country's Chinese
minority, numbering about 300,000, to cooperate in Cambodia's
development, to stay out of politics, and to consider adopting Cambodian
citizenship. This gesture helped to resolve a sensitive issue--the
loyalty of Cambodian Chinese--that had troubled the relationship between
Phnom Penh and Beijing. In 1960 the two countries signed a Treaty of
Friendship and Nonaggression. After the Sino-Soviet rift Sihanouk's
ardent friendship with China contributed to generally cooler ties with
Moscow.
China was not the only large power to which Sihanouk looked for
patronage, however. Cambodia's quest for security and nation- building
assistance impelled the prince to search beyond Asia and to accept help
from all donors as long as there was no impingement upon his country's
sovereignty. With this end in mind, Sihanouk turned to the United States
in 1955 and negotiated a military aid agreement that secured funds and
equipment for the Royal Khmer Armed Forces (Forces Armées Royales
Khmères--FARK).
A United States Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) was
established in Phnom Penh to supervise the delivery and the use of
equipment that began to arrive from the United States. By the early
1960s, aid from Washington constituted 30 percent of Cambodia's defense
budget and 14 percent of total budget inflows.
Relations with the United States, however, proved to be stormy.
United States officials both in Washington and in Phnom Penh frequently
underestimated the prince and considered him to be an erratic figure
with minimal understanding of the threat posed by Asian communism.
Sihanouk easily reciprocated this mistrust because several developments
aroused his suspicion of United States intentions toward his country.
One of these developments was the growing United States influence
within the Cambodian armed forces. The processing of equipment
deliveries and the training of Cambodian personnel had forged close ties
between United States military advisers and their Cambodian
counterparts. Military officers of both nations also shared
apprehensions about the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Sihanouk
considered FARK to be Washington's most powerful constituency in his
country. The prince also feared that a number of high-ranking, rightist
FARK officers led by Lon Nol were becoming too powerful and that, by
association with these officers, United States influence in Cambodia was
becoming too deeply rooted.
A second development included the repetition of overflights by United
States and South Vietnamese military aircraft within Cambodian airspace
and border incursions by South Vietnamese troops in hot pursuit of Viet
Cong insurgents who crossed into Cambodian territory when military
pressure upon them became too sustained. As the early 1960s wore on,
this increasingly sensitive issue contributed to the deterioration of
relations between Phnom Penh and Washington.
A third development was Sihanouk's own belief that he had been
targeted by United States intelligence agencies for replacement by a
more pro-Western leader. Evidence to support this suspicion came to
light in 1959 when the government discovered a plot to overthrow
Sihanouk. The conspiracy involved several Khmer leaders suspected of
American connections. Among them were Sam Sary, a leader of right-wing
Khmer Serei troops in South Vietnam; Son Ngoc Thanh, the early
nationalist leader once exiled into Thailand; and Dap Chhuon, the
military governor of Siemreab Province. Another alleged plot involved
Dap Chuon's establishment of a "free" state that would have
included Siemreab Province and Kampong Thum (Kampong Thom) Province and
the southern areas of Laos that were controlled by the rightist Laotian
prince, Boun Oum.
These developments, magnified by Sihanouk's abiding suspicions,
eventually undermined Phnom Penh's relations with Washington. In
November 1963, the prince charged that the United States was continuing
to support the subversive activities of the Khmer Serei in Thailand and
in South Vietnam, and he announced the immediate termination of
Washington's aid program to Cambodia. Relations continued to
deteriorate, and the final break came in May 1965 amid increasing
indications of airspace violations by South Vietnamese and by United
States aircraft and of ground fighting between Army of the Republic of
Vietnam (ARVN) troops and Viet Cong insurgents in the Cambodian border
areas.
In the meantime, Cambodia's relations with North Vietnam and with
South Vietnam, as well as the rupture with Washington, reflected
Sihanouk's efforts to adjust to geopolitical realities in Southeast Asia
and to keep his country out of the escalating conflict in neighboring
South Vietnam. In the early to mid-1960s, this effort required a tilt
toward Hanoi because the government in Saigon tottered on the brink of
anarchy. In the cities, the administration of Ngo Dinh Diem and the
military regimes that succeeded it had become increasingly ineffectual
and unstable, while in the countryside the government forces were
steadily losing ground to the Hanoi-backed insurgents. To observers in
Phnom Penh, South Vietnam's short-term viability was seriously in doubt,
and this compelled a new tack in Cambodian foreign policy. First,
Cambodia severed diplomatic ties with Saigon in August 1963. The
following March, Sihanouk announced plans to establish diplomatic
relations with North Vietnam and to negotiate a border settlement
directly with Hanoi. These plans were not implemented quickly, however,
because the North Vietnamese told the prince that any problem concerning
Cambodia's border with South Vietnam would have to be negotiated
directly with the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam
(NFLSVN). Cambodia opened border talks with the front in mid-1966, and the
latter recognized the inviolability of Cambodia's borders a year later.
North Vietnam quickly followed suit. Cambodia was the first foreign
government to recognize the NFLSVN's Provisional Revolutionary
Government after it was established in June 1969. Sihanouk was the only
foreign head of state to attend the funeral of Ho Chi Minh, North
Vietnam's deceased leader, in Hanoi three months later.
In the late 1960s, while preserving relations with China and with
North Vietnam, Sihanouk sought to restore a measure of equilibrium by
improving Cambodia's ties with the West. This shift in course by the
prince represented another adjustment to prevailing conditions in
Southeast Asia. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces were increasing
their use of sanctuaries in Cambodia, which also served as the southern
terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, their logistical resupply route
originating in North Vietnam. Cambodian neutrality in the conflict thus
was eroding, and China, preoccupied with its Cultural Revolution, did
not intercede with Hanoi. On Cambodia's eastern border, South Vietnam,
surprisingly, had not collapsed, even in the face of the communist Tet
Offensive in 1968, and President Nguyen Van Thieu's government was
bringing a measure of stability to the war-ravaged country. As the
government in Phnom Penh began to feel keenly the loss of economic and
military aid from the United States, which had totaled about US$400
million between 1955 and 1963, it began to have second thoughts about
the rupture with Washington. The unavailability of American equipment
and spare parts was exacerbated by the poor quality and the small
numbers of Soviet, Chinese, and French substitutes.
In late 1967 and in early 1968, Sihanouk signaled that he would raise
no objection to hot pursuit of communist forces by South Vietnamese or
by United States troops into Cambodian territory. Washington, in the
meantime, accepted the recommendation of the United States Military
Assistance Command--Vietnam (MACV) and, beginning in March 1969, ordered
a series of airstrikes (dubbed the Menu series) against Cambodian
sanctuaries used by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Whether or
not these bombing missions were authorized aroused considerable
controversy, and assertions by the Nixon administration that Sihanouk
had "allowed" or even "encouraged" them were
disputed by critics such as British journalist William Shawcross. On a
diplomatic level, however, the Menu airstrikes did not impede bilateral
relations from moving forward. In April 1969, Nixon sent a note to the
prince affirming that the United States recognized and respected
"the sovereignty, neutrality and territorial integrity of the
Kingdom of Cambodia with its present frontiers." Shortly
thereafter, in June 1969, full diplomatic relations were restored
between Phnom Penh and Washington.
Cambodia - The Cambodian Left: The Early Phases
The history of the communist movement in Cambodia can be divided into
six phases: the emergence of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP),
whose members were almost exclusively Vietnamese, before World War II;
the ten-year struggle for independence from the French, when a separate
Cambodian communist party, the Kampuchean (or Khmer) People's
Revolutionary Party (KPRP), was established under Vietnamese auspices;
the period following the Second Party Congress of the KPRP in 1960, when
Saloth Sar (Pol Pot after 1976) and other future Khmer Rouge leaders
gained control of its apparatus; the revolutionary struggle from the
initiation of the Khmer Rouge insurgency in 1967-68 to the fall of the
Lon Nol government in April 1975; the Democratic Kampuchea regime, from
April 1975 to January 1979; and the period following the Third Party
Congress of the KPRP in January 1979, when Hanoi effectively assumed
control over Cambodia's government and communist party.
Much of the movement's history has been shrouded in mystery, largely
because successive purges, especially during the Democratic Kampuchea
period, have left so few survivors to recount their experiences. One
thing is evident, however, the tension between Khmer and Vietnamese was
a major theme in the movement's development. In the three decades
between the end of World War II and the Khmer Rouge victory, the appeal
of communism to Westerneducated intellectuals (and to a lesser extent
its more inchoate attraction for poor peasants) was tempered by the
apprehension that the much stronger Vietnamese movement was using
communism as an ideological rationale for dominating the Khmer. The
analogy between the Vietnamese communists and the Nguyen dynasty, which
had legitimized its encroachments in the nineteenth century in terms of
the "civilizing mission" of Confucianism, was persuasive.
Thus, the new brand of indigenous communism that emerged after 1960
combined nationalist and revolutionary appeals and, when it could afford
to, exploited the virulent anti-Vietnamese sentiments of the Khmers.
Khmer Rouge literature in the 1970s frequently referred to the
Vietnamese as yuon (barbarian), a term dating from the
Angkorian period.
In 1930 Ho Chi Minh founded the Vietnamese Communist Party by
unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in Tonkin,
in Annam, and in Cochinchina during the late 1920s. The name was changed
almost immediately to the ICP, ostensibly to include revolutionaries
from Cambodia and Laos. Almost without exception, however, all the
earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a
handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, but their influence on the
Indochinese communist movement and on developments within Cambodia was
negligible.
Viet Minh units occasionally made forays into Cambodia bases during
their war against the French, and, in conjunction with the leftist
government that ruled Thailand until 1947, the Viet Minh encouraged the
formation of armed, left-wing Khmer Issarak bands. On April 17, 1950
(twenty-five years to the day before the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom
Penh), the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups
convened, and the United Issarak Front was established. Its leader was
Son Ngoc Minh (possibly a brother of the nationalist Son Ngoc Thanh),
and a third of its leadership consisted of members of the ICP. According
to the historian David P. Chandler, the leftist Issarak groups, aided by
the Viet Minh, occupied a sixth of Cambodia's territory by 1952; and, on
the eve of the Geneva Conference, they controlled as much as one half of
the country.
In 1951 the ICP was reorganized into three national units--the
Vietnam Workers' Party, the Lao Itsala, and the KPRP. According to a
document issued after the reorganization, the Vietnam Workers' Party
would continue to "supervise" the smaller Laotian and
Cambodian movements. Most KPRP leaders and rank-and-file seem to have
been either Khmer Krom, or ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia. The
party's appeal to indigenous Khmers appears to have been minimal.
According to Democratic Kampuchea's version of party history, the
Viet Minh's failure to negotiate a political role for the KPRP at the
1954 Geneva Conference represented a betrayal of the Cambodian movement,
which still controlled large areas of the countryside and which
commanded at least 5,000 armed men. Following the conference, about
1,000 members of the KPRP, including Son Ngoc Minh, made a "Long
March" into North Vietnam, where they remained in exile. In late
1954, those who stayed in Cambodia founded a legal political party, the
Pracheachon Party, which participated in the 1955 and the 1958 National
Assembly elections. In the September 1955 election, it won about 4
percent of the vote but did not secure a seat in the legislature.
Members of the Pracheachon were subject to constant harassment and to
arrests because the party remained outside Sihanouk's Sangkum.
Government attacks prevented it from participating in the 1962 election
and drove it underground. Sihanouk habitually labeled local leftists the
Khmer Rouge, a term that later came to signify the party and the state
headed by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, and their associates.
During the mid-1950s, KPRP factions, the "urban committee"
(headed by Tou Samouth), and the "rural committee" (headed by
Sieu Heng), emerged. In very general terms, these groups espoused
divergent revolutionary lines. The prevalent "urban" line,
endorsed by North Vietnam, recognized that Sihanouk, by virtue of his
success in winning independence from the French, was a genuine national
leader whose neutralism and deep distrust of the United States made him
a valuable asset in Hanoi's struggle to "liberate" South
Vietnam. Champions of this line hoped that the prince could be persuaded
to distance himself from the right wing and to adopt leftist policies.
The other line, supported for the most part by rural cadres who were
familiar with the harsh realities of the countryside, advocated an
immediate struggle to overthrow the "feudalist" Sihanouk. In
1959 Sieu Heng defected to the government and provided the security
forces with information that enabled them to destroy as much as 90
percent of the party's rural apparatus. Although communist networks in
Phnom Penh and in other towns under Tou Samouth's jurisdiction fared
better, only a few hundred communists remained active in the country by
1960.
Cambodia - The Paris Student Group
During the 1950s, Khmer students in Paris organized their own
communist movement, which had little, if any, connection to the
hard-pressed party in their homeland. From their ranks came the men and
women who returned home and took command of the party apparatus during
the 1960s, led an effective insurgency against Sihanouk and Lon Nol from
1968 until 1975, and established the regime of Democratic Kampuchea.
Pol Pot, who rose to the leadership of the communist movement in the
1960s, was born in 1928 (some sources say in 1925) in Kampong Thum
Province, north of Phnom Penh. He attended a technical high school in
the capital and then went to Paris in 1949 to study radio electronics
(other sources say he attended a school for printers and typesetters and
also studied civil engineering). Described by one source as a
"determined, rather plodding organizer," he failed to obtain a
degree, but, according to the Jesuit priest, Father François Ponchaud,
he acquired a taste for the classics of French literature as well as for
the writings of Marx.
Another member of the Paris student group was Ieng Sary. He was a
Chinese-Khmer born in 1930 in South Vietnam. He attended the elite Lycée
Sisowath in Phnom Penh before beginning courses in commerce and politics
at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in France. Khieu Samphan, considered
"one of the most brilliant intellects of his generation," was
born in 1931 and specialized in economics and politics during his time
in Paris. In talent he was rivaled by Hou Yuon, born in 1930, who was
described as being "of truly astounding physical and intellectual
strength," and who studied economics and law. Son Sen, born in
1930, studied education and literature; Hu Nim, born in 1932, studied
law.
These men were perhaps the most educated leaders in the history of
Asian communism. Two of them, Khieu Samphan and Hou Yuon, earned
doctorates from the University of Paris; Hu Nim obtained his degree from
the University of Phnom Penh in 1965. In retrospect, it seems enigmatic
that these talented members of the elite, sent to France on government
scholarships, could launch the bloodiest and most radical revolution in
modern Asian history. Most came from landowner or civil servant
families. Pol Pot and Hou Yuon may have been related to the royal
family. An older sister of Pol Pot had been a concubine at the court of
King Monivong. Three of the Paris group forged a bond that survived
years of revolutionary struggle and intraparty strife, Pol Pot and Ieng
Sary married Khieu Ponnary and Khieu Thirith (also known as Ieng
Thirith), purportedly relatives of Khieu Samphan. These two
well-educated women also played a central role in the regime of
Democratic Kampuchea.
The intellectual ferment of Paris must have been a dizzying
experience for young Khmers fresh from Phnom Penh or the provinces. A
number sought refuge in the dogma of orthodox Marxism-Leninism. At some
time between 1949 and 1951, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary joined the French
Communist Party, the most tightly disciplined and Stalinist of Western
Europe's communist movements. In 1951 the two men went to East Berlin to
participate in a youth festival. This experience is considered to have
been a turning point in their ideological development. Meeting with
Khmers who were fighting with the Viet Minh (and whom they subsequently
judged to be too subservient to the Vietnamese), they became convinced
that only a tightly disciplined party organization and a readiness for
armed struggle could achieve revolution. They transformed the Khmer
Students' Association (KSA), to which most of the 200 or so Khmer
students in Paris belonged, into a platform for nationalist and leftist
ideas. In 1952 Pol Pot, Hou Yuon, Ieng Sary, and other leftists gained
notoriety by sending an open letter to Sihanouk calling him the
"strangler of infant democracy." A year later, the French
authorities closed down the KSA. In 1956, however, Hou Yuon and Khieu
Samphan helped to establish a new Marxist-oriented group, the Khmer
Students' Union.
The doctoral dissertations written by Hou Yuon and Khieu Samphan
express basic themes that were later to become the cornerstones of the
policy adopted by Democratic Kampuchea. The central role of the peasants
in national development was espoused by Hou Yuon in his 1955 thesis,
"The Cambodian Peasants and Their Prospects for
Modernization," which challenged the conventional view that
urbanization and industrialization are necessary precursors of
development. The major argument in Khieu Samphan's 1959 thesis,
"Cambodia's Economy and Industrial Development," was that the
country had to become self-reliant and had to end its economic
dependency on the developed world. In its general contours, Khieu's work
reflected the influence of a branch of the "dependency theory"
school, which blamed lack of development in the Third World on the
economic domination of the industrialized nations.
Cambodia - The KPRP Second Congress
After returning to Cambodia in 1953, Pol Pot threw himself into party
work first in Kampong Cham Province (Kompong Cham) and then in Phnom
Penh under Tou Samouth's "urban committee." His comrades, Ieng
Sary and Hou Yuon, became teachers at a new private high school, the Lycée
Kambuboth, which Hou Yuon helped to establish. Khieu Samphan returned
from Paris in 1959, taught as a member of the law faculty of the
University of Phnom Penh, and started a left-wing, French-language
publication, L'Observateur. The paper soon acquired a
reputation in Phnom Penh's small academic circle. The following year,
the government closed the paper, and Sihanouk's police publicly
humiliated Khieu by undressing and photographing him in public--as
Shawcross notes, "not the sort of humiliation that men forgive or
forget." Yet the experience did not prevent Khieu from advocating
cooperation with Sihanouk in order to promote a united front against
United States activities in South Vietnam. As mentioned, Khieu Samphan,
Hou Yuon, and Hu Nim tried to "work through the system" by
joining the Sangkum and by accepting posts in the prince's government.
Hardliners like Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and Son Sen advocated resistance.
In late September, 1960, twenty-one leaders of the KPRP held a secret
congress in a vacant room of the Phnom Penh railroad station. This
pivotal event remains shrouded in mystery because its outcome has become
an object of contention (and considerable historical rewriting) between
pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Khmer communist factions. The
question of cooperation with, or resistance to, Sihanouk was thoroughly
discussed. Tou Samouth, who advocated a policy of cooperation, was
elected general secretary of the KPRP that was renamed the Workers'
Party of Kampuchea (WPK). His ally, Nuon Chea (also known as Long Reth),
became deputy general secretary; however, Pol Pot and Ieng Sary were
named to the Political Bureau to occupy the third and the fifth highest
positions in the renamed party's hierarchy. The name change is
significant. By calling itself a workers' party, the Cambodian movement
claimed equal status with the Vietnam Workers' Party. The pro-Vietnamese
regime of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) implied in the 1980s
that the September 1960 meeting was nothing more than the second
congress of the KPRP.
On July 20, 1962, Tou Samouth disappeared. He may have been the
victim of Sihanouk's police, but some observers suggest that Pol Pot,
who had built up a strong faction within the party, had him eliminated.
In February 1963, at the WPK's second congress, Pol Pot was chosen to
succeed Tou Samouth as the party's general secretary. Tou's allies, Nuon
Chea and Keo Meas, were removed from the Central Committee and replaced
by Son Sen and Vorn Vet. From then on, Pol Pot and loyal comrades from
his Paris student days controlled the party center, edging out older
veterans whom they considered excessively pro-Vietnamese.
In July 1963, Pol Pot and most of the central committee left Phnom
Penh to establish an insurgent base in Rotanokiri (Ratanakiri) Province
in the northeast. This is a region inhabited by tribal minorities, the
Khmer Loeu, whose rough treatment (including resettlement and forced
assimilation) at the hands of the central government made them willing
recruits for a guerrilla struggle. In 1965 Pol Pot made a visit of
several months duration to North Vietnam and China. He probably received
some training in China, which must have enhanced his prestige when he
returned to the WPK's liberated areas. Despite friendly relations
between Sihanouk and the Chinese, the latter kept Pol Pot's visit a
secret from Sihanouk. In September 1966, the party changed its name a
second time, to the Kampuchean (or Khmer) Communist Party (KCP).
Adopting the label "communist" suggested that the Cambodian
movement was more advanced than Vietnam's (which was merely a
"workers' party"), and was on the same level as China's.
Cambodia - INSURRECTION AND WAR, 1967-75
By the mid-1960s, Sihanouk's delicate balancing act was beginning to
go awry. Regionally, the presence of large-scale North Vietnamese and
Viet Cong logistical bases on Cambodian territory and the use of Kampong
Saom (then Sihanoukville) as a port of disembarkation for supplies being
sent to communist troops, as well as the covert intelligence-gathering,
sabotage missions, and overflights by South Vietnamese and United States
teams had made a sham of Cambodian neutrality. Domestically, Sihanouk's
sporadic harassment of the leftists and the withdrawal of his
endorsement from all candidates in the 1966 elections cost the radicals
their chance for victory and alienated them from the prince as well.
Sihanouk also lost the support of the rightists by his failure to come
to grips with the deteriorating economic situation in the country and
with the growing North Vietnamese and Viet Cong military presence in
Cambodia. In addition to these regional developments and the clash of
interests among Phnom Penh's politicized elite, social tensions also
were creating a favorable environment for the growth of a domestic
communist insurgency in the rural areas.
In early 1967, an insurrection broke out in the area around Samlot in
Batdambang, a province long noted for the presence of large landowners
and great disparities of wealth. Local resentment focused on tax
collections and on the decision of the revenuestarved government to
expropriate land to build a sugar refinery near Samlot. In January 1967,
irate villagers attacked a tax collection brigade--an incident that
recalled the 1925 murder of the French resident in the area. With the
probable encouragement of local communist cadres, the insurrection
quickly spread through the whole region. Sihanouk was on one of his
frequent sojourns in France, and Lon Nol, the prime minister, responded
harshly. After returning home in March 1967, Sihanouk personally
supervised counterinsurgency measures. He later mentioned, in an offhand
way, that the effectiveness of the royal armed forces had restored the
peace but that approximately 10,000 people had died.
The insurgency was not suppressed completely. It spread rapidly from
Batdambang to the southern and to the southwestern provinces of
Pouthisat (Pursat), Kampong Chhnang (Kompong Chang), Kampong Cham,
Kampong Spoe (Kompong Speu), Kampot, and the central province of Kampong
Thum. By the end of 1968, unrest was reported in eleven of the country's
eighteen provinces. The Khmer Loeu regions of Mondol Kiri (Mondolkiri)
Province and Rotanokiri Province fell almost entirely under KCP control
by the end of the decade.
In January 1968, the communists established the Revolutionary Army of
Kampuchea (RAK). During Sihanouk's last two years in power, the RAK
obtained minimal assistance from the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong,
and the Chinese. Although North Vietnam had established a special unit
in 1966 to train the Cambodian communists, it was extremely reluctant to
alienate Sihanouk at a time when vital supplies were passing through the
port of Kampong Saom and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Viet Cong
bases along the CambodiaVietnam border. Beijing and Moscow also were
providing Sihanouk with arms, many of which were being used against the
insurgents. The indifference of the world communist movement to the
Cambodian struggle from 1967 to 1969 made a permanent impression on Pol
Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders.
Cambodia - The March 1970 Coup d'Etat
Sihanouk was away on a trip to Moscow and Beijing when General Lon
Nol launched a successful coup d'état. On the morning of March 18,
1970, the National Assembly was hastily convened, and voted unanimously
to depose Sihanouk as head of state. Lon Nol, who had been serving as
prime minister, was granted emergency powers. Sirik Matak, an
ultraconservative royal prince who in 1941 had been passed over by the
French in favor of his cousin Norodom Sihanouk as king, retained his
post as deputy prime minister. The new government emphasized that the
transfer of power had been totally legal and constitutional, and it
received the recognition of most foreign governments.
Most middle-class and educated Khmers in Phnom Penh had grown weary
of Sihanouk and apparently welcomed the change of government. But he was
still popular in the villages. Days after the coup, the prince, now in
Beijing, broadcast an appeal to the people to resist the usurpers.
Demonstrations and riots occurred throughout the country. In one
incident on March 29, an estimated 40,000 peasants began a march on the
capital to demand Sihanouk's reinstatement. They were dispersed, with
many casualties, by contingents of the armed forces and the Khmer Serei.
From Beijing, Sihanouk proclaimed his intention to create a National
United Front of Kampuchea (Front Uni National du Kampuchéa, FUNK). In the prince's words, this front would embrace "all Khmer
both inside and outside the country-- including the faithful, religious
people, military men, civilians, and men and women who cherish the
ideals of independence, democracy, neutrality, progressivism, socialism,
Buddhism, nationalism, territorial integrity, and
anti-imperialism." A coalition, brokered by the Chinese, was
hastily formed between the prince and the KCP. On May 5, 1970, the
actual establishment of FUNK and of the Royal Government of National
Union of Kampuchea (Gouvernement Royal d'Union Nationale du Kampuchéa,
GRUNK,
were announced. Sihanouk assumed the post of GRUNK head of state,
appointing Penn Nouth, one of his most loyal supporters, as prime
minister. Khieu Samphan was designated deputy prime minister, minister
of defense, and commander in chief of the GRUNK armed forces (though
actual military operations were directed by Pol Pot). Hu Nim became
minister of information, and Hou Yuon assumed multiple responsibilities
as minister of interior, communal reforms, and cooperatives. GRUNK
claimed that it was not a government-in-exile because Khieu Samphan and
the insurgents remained inside Cambodia.
For Sihanouk and the KCP, this was an extremely useful marriage of
convenience. Peasants, motivated by loyalty to the monarchy, rallied to
the FUNK cause. The appeal of the Sihanouk-KCP coalition grew immensely
after October 9, 1970, when Lon Nol abolished the monarchy and
redesignated Cambodia as the Khmer Republic. The concept of a republic
was not popular with most villagers, who had grown up with the idea that
something was seriously awry in a Cambodia without a monarch.
GRUNK operated on two tiers. Sihanouk and his loyalists remained in
Beijing, although the prince did make a visit to the "liberated
areas" of Cambodia, including Angkor Wat, in March 1973. The KCP
commanded the insurgency within the country. Gradually, the prince was
deprived of everything but a passive, figurehead role in the coalition.
The KCP told people inside Cambodia that expressions of support for
Sihanouk would result in their liquidation, and when the prince appeared
in public overseas to publicize the GRUNK cause, he was treated with
almost open contempt by Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan. In June 1973, the
prince told the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci that when "they
[the Khmer Rouge] no longer need me, they will spit me out like a cherry
pit!" By the end of that year, Sihanouk loyalists had been purged
from all of GRUNK's ministries.
Cambodia - The Widening War
The 1970 coup d'état that toppled Sihanouk dragged Cambodia into the
vortex of a wider war. The escalating conflict pitted government troops,
now renamed the Khmer National Armed Forces (Forces Armées Nationales
Khmères, FANK), initially against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, and
subsequently against the old RAK, now revitalized and renamed the
Cambodian People's National Liberation Armed Forces (CPNLAF).
As combat operations quickly disclosed, the two sides were
mismatched. The inequality lay not so much in sheer numbers. Thousands
of young urban Cambodians flocked to join FANK in the months following
the coup and, throughout its five-year life, the republican government
forces held a numerical edge over their opponents, the padded payrolls
and the phantom units reported in the press notwithstanding. Instead,
FANK was outclassed in training and leadership. With the surge of
recruits, the government forces expanded beyond their capacity to absorb
the new inductees. Later, given the press of tactical operations and the
need to replace combat casualties, there was insufficient time to impart
needed skills to individuals or to units, and lack of training remained
the bane of FANK's existence until its collapse. While individual
soldiers and some government units fought bravely, their leaders-- with
notable exceptions--were both corrupt and incompetent. Arrayed against
an armed force of such limited capability was arguably the best light
infantry in the world at the time--the North Vietnamese and the Viet
Cong. And when there forces were supplanted, it was by the tough,
rigidly indoctrinated peasant army of the CPNLAF with its core of Khmer
Rouge leaders.
With the fall of Sihanouk, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong
became alarmed at the prospect of a pro-Western regime that might allow
the United States to establish a military presence on their western
flank. To prevent this from happening, they began transferring their
military installations away from the border area to locations deeper
within Cambodian territory. A new comma
