Cambodian People and Cambodian Society Character Flaws as Perceived by Some Foreign Scholars

(Comments: criticism does not have any place in the Cambodian culture and society. Since very young age, Cambodians are taught not to talk back to their parents, other elderlies, and teachers. A good child is an absolute obedient child. Like most people, Cambodians do not like to be criticized, especially by another Cambodian. But, what differ the Cambodians from the rest of the world is the fact that there is no difference in meaning between constructive and non-constructive criticism. As a matter of fact, there is no word for constructive criticism. The word "Criticism = Rih Koun" is synonymous to "insult." The consequence of this Cambodian national character results from the lack of check and balance in the Cambodian society which, in turn, leads to abuse of power by those who are the rulers, as pointed out by the French anthropologist, Marie Alexandrine Martin in her book "Cambodia: a Shattered Society." Unlike other Asians, most Cambodians fear to criticize and to be criticized, has led those who are now living in the United States or in Europe to marginalize themselves, by not being involved in the political process in these adopted countries. As a result, they have no voice in whatever affects them negatively or positively. It takes a lot of courage for a Cambodian to criticize another Cambodian, especially in public, however benign the criticism may be. Those who dare challenge or contradict another person in public is not very well received in the Cambodian community, even in the USA or Europe where the habit and right to criticize is not only accepted but encouraged and welcome. Those who criticize will be considered as violators of the code of conduct known as "group harmony." The price for those who dare to criticize is very high. Those who are being criticized may consider the critics and their family as a mortal enemy for life. Most Cambodians, therefore, tend to totally reject any negative criticism or analysis of Cambodian behavior. Instead of trying to understand what and why a foreigner would think of Cambodians in a manner that is considered negative, they tend to completely shut themselves off from the author's criticism. Thereby, and wrongly, they were hoping that things would go away with time. However, there are a few exceptions to this general rule in that there are a number of brave Cambodians who dared criticize or analyze the main flaws in the Cambodian behavior Below are some selected perceptions of Cambodians (see "Khmer Mentality" and "Khmer Today- the Notion of Time" in the "Special Articles and Essays" heading). and the Cambodian society by some noted experts in Cambodian affairs. I do hope that my fellow Cambodians would gather sufficient courage and common sense to carefully read these perceptions and to also try to see and understand whether these perceptions are justified. And after having read them, if they think that these perception are not correctly made, then they should try to come up with some solid explanations to refute

these assertions or findings, instead of rejecting them outright. Washington DC. February 6, 2013; Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D.) ______________________________________________________

French Colonialists' Perception of Cambodians

Normally better informed, the naturalist Henri Mouhot coming from Bangkok, writes: Misery, conceit, crudeness, deceit, cowardliness, docility, and excessive laziness are trademarks of this miserable people. Twenty two years later, another passerby but much cruder, go further: The Cambodian better built, appears first to be a formidable adversary illusion which will disappear very quickly; you will find his intelligence as dull as that of a Vietnamese is alive. The Monkey thinks and does not talk; the Cambodian talks but does not think. The relations between the colonized and colonizers will therefore take place on another framework than that of Cochinchina." Charles Myers; Les Francais en Indochine; ___________________________________________________________

Perception of the Cambodian society by an American and Australian historian The power of the king to extract resources from the ordinary people

"Loyalty, in other words, was to be rewarded by the right to extract surpluses from regions under some sort of control by Tumsvracs, who were linked by allegiance to the king. Under Suryavarman, priestly and bureaucratic functions, seldom separate in practice, were institutionalized. Government-sponsored religious foundations became conduits for government revenue and largesse in ways that remain obscure but probably were connected with the power of the priestly-bureaucratic families around the king." David Chandler; A History of Cambodia, (Westview publishing, Boulder, 2000) ___________________________________________________________

The king's absolute power to make or break an ordinary commoner

"The officials who held power, whether at the center of the state in the kings' s palace or in the outer regions, were not men who gained their appointments through scholarship. Birth into a quasi-hereditary family, ability, and an opportunity to gain the ruler's notice all played their part in determining advancement. It would be quite wrong to suggest that the rulers of Buddhist kingdoms did not have clear ideas on what constituted a good official, for the record is

clear they did. But the standards were much more flexible and much more personal than those that applied in Vietnam. In the same fashion the conduct of human business within the state was less set in formal pattern, more subject to the personal likes and dislikes of the kings at the highest level, or the officials great and small in the provinces away from the capital." Source: Milton Osborne; Southeast Asia: an Introductory History; George Allen&Unwin; Sidney, 1983 ___________________________________________________________

Post Angkorian history of Cambodia

The state of total breakdown in governance and morality in Cambodia after the fall of Angkor The post-Angkorian history of Cambodia, such as we can reconstitute it with the royal chronicles set against the Siamese annals of Ayuthya, the history of Mings and of Tangs, the annals of the empire of Annam and the tales of the first Spanish and Portuguese missionaries, is nothing but a succession of wars against the Siamese and Vietnamese invaders, revolts of princes and mandarins, conspiracies and usurpations of the throne. At the court, which wanders from one place to another, intrigues, treasons and murders are taking place in succession with protagonists as the kings, the princes and the mandarins who sold themselves to the king of Siam or has the emperor of Annam in exchange for their support. Charles Meyer,; Derrire le sourire Khmer (Librairie Plon, Paris, France, 1971) ____________________________________________________________

An Uncertain Legacy: The Khmer Paradox

(Highly recommended) From: "Angkor; Art and Civilization" By Bernard Philippe Groslier The significance of the Khmer civilization Our knowledge of Khmer civilization is far from complete: many surprises are in store, too many problems await detailed study. We can at least pronounce judgment on the period from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, which witnessed the preeminence of Angkor. The chronological and historical framework is based on solid foundations; we are familiar with the principal buildings and can follow the course of their evolution. Though our interpretation of the facts is still far from certain, we may without undue risk attempt to draw certain conclusions of general application. The Khmer civilization was the most important, the most brilliant and original in

ancient Indochina. Although classification by order of merit is a somewhat puerile historical pastime, it can also be regarded as one of the greatest, together with that of Indonesia, in the whole of Indianized Asia. The brilliant achievements of ancient Cambodia were due primarily to the country' s wealth of natural resources. No other country of the peninsula could boast of such an unbroken extent of fertile and well-watered land. Cambodia, being a strictly defined and admirably situated geographical unit, was the cradle of a powerful and gifted race. The people were left in peace throughout ten centuries, without any outside interference.... But neither a favourable environment nor limitless resources nor years of peace would have sufficed without the spiritual contribution of India. India was the spark that fired the blaze. A strongly centralized society gradually grew up round the king, the god on earth, who guaranteed its spiritual and material existence. It was to this concentration of power as well as to her flourishing economy that Cambodia owed her unrivalled fame. We are reminded, though on a more modest scale, of the Roman Empire united by the cult of Caesar, or better still of the Chinese Empire, itself also the product of the exploitation of the soil and of a religion both of which centered on the person of the Emperor. In this respect Cambodia sometimes even surpassed her Indian teachers.... On the other hand, we must not be led by its undeniable brilliance to bestow unqualified praise on Khmer civilization. It contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. An excessive and too exclusive inflation of the royal power produced a kind of hypertrophy which exhausted the nation beyond hope of recovery. The country was milked dry for the sole benefit of the king. Religion and art alike were dedicated to his service. Our judgment may perhaps be warped owing to the disappearance of all secular writings and of an incalculable number of works of art. But there is no evidence of any healthy philosophy developing outside the cult of the king-god, after whose disappearance there was in any case nothing capable of regenerating the nation. In such a closed society nothing was left to pin one's faith on - except Buddhism, a religion of total renunciation. For this reason Khmer culture was not only doomed to perish sooner or later, but was incapable of spreading. It is obvious that it was the germ of the civilizations of Siam and Laos, and had a profound influence on the Chams. But the sole reason for this was that these countries were more or less under Khmer domination, deriving from a related racial stock and living under similar conditions. Khmer civilization was valid in the environment and specific circumstances from which it emerged, but it could not be reproduced in other times and places. Cambodia must consequently be classed with those cultures which, splendid though they may be, have never, like Egypt, Japan and the

Empire of the Incas, transcended their geographical and ethnical frontiers. There have, as we know, been centers of civilization, perhaps of less brilliant achievement, which have nevertheless proved models of inspiration to other lands: such for example as Greece, Israel, Iran, Rome, China and India 'countries greater than themselves', as Ren Grousset liked to call them. It is perhaps worth while attempting to discover the reason why some civilizations are like beautiful but barren trees, while others are laden with blossom and fruit. The former, in our opinion, is doomed because they are incapable of evolving a philosophy of man and his destiny. In this field ancient Cambodia was satisfied with what India gave her, and even so was content to remain second best. In spite of the extraordinary development of the State in Cambodia, she appears never to have formulated any theory of power or public welfare such as was bequeathed to all Europe by Rome and to the Far East by China. In Cambodia there was no society, nothing but an undefined juxtaposition of elementary and undifferentiated cells. There were no classes, none of those intermediate and unstable structures which alone provide any possibility of evolution. There was nothing but a vast anonymous proletariat, with a head which may have been wonderful but was, after all, severed from the body. It was a polypous society , a hive incapable of self-reproduction other than by swarming, doomed inexorably to die, as soon as queen, is destroyed. Great initial gifts, long-maintained prosperity, and certainly a wonderful achievement. Yet nothing of all this survives but a vague memory. Such, no doubt, is the fate of all greatness divorced from love. Nor must it be forgotten that the record of the Khmers survives only because our own humanism, faithful to its proper task, has been at pains to exhume it and bring to life almost in spite of itself. Moreover, it is only a portion of that interest for us, today. The history of the Khmers has its place, like any other human fact, in the field of general knowledge. The evolution of Khmer society is a fruitful theme for the consideration of the sociologist. Yet neither is of primary importance, because both lie outside the main streams of universal history, and neither has left any offspring. The underlying glory and unique legacy of ancient Cambodia are to be found in the wonderful monuments which stand sentinel in Angkor. A legacy from the past: Khmer art: It would be easy to point to a more masterly architecture, a more remarkable Sculpture, a more logical decoration. Among the other works of art produced in Asia itself there are many more meaningful and more sympathetic. The art of Angkor, like its culture, was not a source of universal inspiration. In saying this we may be doing an injustice to the fine productions of medieval Cambodia or Siam, of which we know so little but which have sometimes proved worthy successors to the Angkor traditions. But it must be admitted that we cannot speak

of a Khmer aesthetic, or cannot at any rate say that it was one of those discoveries which become a permanent part of human experience. It may be agreed that the art of Angkor was instinctive, lacking in restraint and too often prosaic, and that it left no heirs. Nevertheless Angkor remains a unique ensemble, equally fascinating to the newcomer and to the scholar who has spent years in its study. I am inclined to believe that its secret is to be found in that word 'ensemble'. Taken in detail Khmer art is always a little disappointing. But its size is unsurpassable, the harmony of these enormous structures, the feeling of what may be called urbanism. The temple-mountain symbolizes a whole universe, and owes its grandeur to the very loftiness of its aim. Standing as it does in the centre of the city it makes its effect by its wonderful perspectives of light and shade. From the mind that conceived it, it derives its diagrammatic effect and its symbolic power. The faith that raised its stones has imprinted on them the touching beauty of the human face. And because it was constructed out of space and time, it still dominates the one and has defied the other, lifting its temples in a perpetual gesture against the sky. The regal majesty and calm repose of Angkor Wat; the troubled message of the Bayon with its hundred faces.... Fully to express them we need something more than words, something better than pictures: we need to add the dawn breaking over the forest, the sun's ray suddenly piercing the clouds - and the silence.... Rare breezes and shifting lights; a heavy coolness; indefinable scents; immobility rather than death, and repose rather than sadness. All these make up the beauty of the stones of Angkor and the memory of the men who wrought them. {Bernard-Philippe Groslier Angkor: Art and Civilization translated by Eric Ernshaw Smith, 1966, (From: Khmer: The Lost Empire of Cambodia, by Thierry Zaphir, Harry N Abrams, New York, 1998)}

Traditional village and family organization in Cambodia

Village and family organization, especially if compared to China and Vietnam, or India, were extremely weak. Khmer villages were not cohesive units, as in Vietnam, dealing collectively with officials; and beyond the nuclear household, families easily disintegrated. Family names did not exist, records of previous generations were not kept, ancestors were not the object of a religious cult. Corporate discipline over the individual by extended families or by village organizations was weak, and once a person had fulfilled his obligations to the state as a tax or corve there was little constraint in his activities. It is thus likely that a paradoxical situation of great anarchic individual freedom prevailed in a society in which there was no formal freedom at all. The relations among royalty, officials, and peasantry, which did not begin to

change under the colonial impact until 1884, were organized in forms of dependency. Everyone below the king had a fixed dependent status which served to determine his obligations to the next higher level and also provided protection. The provinces of the realm were given in appanage to the highest officials of the capital whose agents in the provinces collected the taxes and organized the corve which were the raison dtre for the system. Each peasant in theory, and in the central agricultural provinces in reality was dependent client of an official whose identity he knew. Besides such dependence at all levels of society within the country, the Cambodian ruling class had for centuries been dependent on foreign over-lords and protectors, usually Siam and Vietnam, but at one point in the 1560s Europeans, and French protection against Vietnam was sought in the 19th century even before the French were ready to impose it. There was thus no serious conception of self-reliance at any level of Cambodian society, and in a crisis everyone looked to a powerful savior from above or outside rather than seeking a local solution. (Michael Vickery; Cambodia; 1975-1982, South End Press, Singapore, 1984) ____________________________________________________

Independence Is Not A Status, But A Task: A lesson from Vaslav Havel (former president of the Czech Republic) (From The Mirror of Cambodian Society, January 2004)

One year ago this week was 29 January 2003, when anti-Thai riots damaged property and relationships. Although some people on a higher political level say that what happened is past and should be forgotten, a Thai businessman who experienced the attack is quoted: "In my mind, we will never forget." To forget is never a choice - it happens naturally when something seems no longer important. And when some persons want to forget, others may want to remind them. There are also hard facts: less than half of the material damage has been compensated. And compensation normally means that what was destroyed will be restituted - but it is reported that much of the compensation negotiated so far is not actual money to rebuild. It is in the form of tax waivers, if the company invests more and continues business in Cambodia. So Cambodia is still heavily in debt; the total damage to 33 Thai companies and the Thai Embassy was estimated around US$54 million. Even when all the damages will have been paid, the view of Cambodia by others from outside remains a burden. The fact that many hundreds of people participated in denouncing an actress on the basis of an unproven rumor, and that a statement attributed to Prof. Prasidh Ekabutr - which he denies resulted again in agitated reporting, is often explained as a defense against more powerful neighbors. But do accusations without proof or violence solve problems? Despite differences in history and location, it may be useful to look at the Czech Republic, a

small country with a glorious past history. For a time, it was a dependent satellite of the Soviet Union. It became independent again when the latter collapsed. Vclav Havel, a former dissident and political prisoner, was elected president in 1989. He wrote about the need to secure the Czech Republics re-found identity and independence in a situation where it is located between more powerful neighbors: "Independence is not a status, but a task. It is necessary to define our independence and give it content. This means, first of all, to realize where we are, and to establish new relationships to our neighbors. Our historical destiny is, because of our geographical location between other countries, necessarily linked with the new developments in Europe. To find our appropriate place in this political context means for us as a small country - probably more than for others that we have to look beyond the horizon of our own narrow particular interests, in order to develop a more global vision of the general future for all. Slowly, the people in our countries start to understand that they can achieve more when they cooperate than when they insist on their own ways." _______________________________________________

How to slice a century of Cambodian history

By David Chandler (Phnom Penh Post, (December 24, 1999 January 6, 2000) As far as Cambodia is concerned, the century just ending can be fruitfully described in several ways. An unpromising approach would be to cut the century more or less in half, with fifty-four years labeled "the colonial era" and the rest "Cambodia since independence." A better approach would be to see Cambodia gradually emerging into a wider, largely indifferent world, buffeted by a succession of foreign influences, starting with France, continuing through a period of haphazard but brutal American interference followed by stretches of Chinese and Vietnamese Marxism-Leninism before "ending" in 1999 with an exCommunist government facing the amorphous challenges of globalization. A third way of treating Cambodia's history is to examine the conduct of its political leaders, including the French, and to evaluate their efforts both to control the country and to achieve some sort of "reading" of Cambodge/Cambodia/Kampuchea that would legitimate them and also endow the country with a unique or at least a suitable identity. Given Cambodia's permeable borders and its demographic weakness vis vis Thailand and Vietnam, the battle for uniqueness seems to have been lost some time ago and the price paid by many Cambodians, to say nothing of their political leaders, has been high. On the other hand, every twentieth century Cambodian ruler, including the French and continuing to Hun Sen, has tried to establish a form of government sharply different from the preceding one, putting a personal mark on his portion of the century. In several cases, an incoming regime has sharpened the contrast by condemning the leaders of the previous government to death.

A final approach to Cambodia's history in the 1900s, unpalatable to an historian, is to suggest that as Cambodia emerges into Southeast Asia and as Southeast Asia enters the world, Cambodia is losing the capacity to generate its own history. What had been in some sense an island or a village is being submerged in a global ocean, affected by global changes in climate, population, culture and economics over which no one in Cambodia has any control. Seen from this perspective, as from the third, "Cambodian" history as it has been constructed and written about in the past may be coming to an end, as "Cambodia" loses parts of its former meaning. Hun Sen is Cambodia's first ruler who seems indifferent to history, in the sense that he makes no connection between his government and Cambodia's past, or between his style of rule and the style of previous rulers. It is hard to imagine Sihanouk, Lon Nol, or even Pol Pot telling an audience as Hun Sen did in 1998, that it was time to "dig a hole and bury the past" even when we consider that "the past" is for thousands of Cambodians an unbearable burden. Although overshadowed in many peoples' minds by more recent events, the colonial era in Cambodia filled up the first half of the century and laid the groundwork, in many ways for the regimes that followed. The historian Alain Forest has described colonialism in Cambodia as "painless" (sans heurts), and it seems fair to say that the relationships forged between French colonial administrators and the Cambodian elite were indeed benign and painless, for the elite. Cambodia's rural poor benefited less, but with improvements in communications, markets, and veterinary medicine, for example, they were better off at the end of the colonial era than they had been at the beginning. More importantly, between the 1880s and the 1940s Cambodia was at peace. During the colonial era, its population quadrupled. The shortcomings of French colonialism in Cambodia fade in comparison to what has afflicted the country since 1970. Nonetheless, the French left many rough patches in Cambodian institutional life. These can be traced in part to the fact that the French never intended to leave. Unlike the British and the Americans but like the Dutch and Portuguese, the French saw little point in educating Cambodians for very long or en masse. They saw no point in preparing them for a world any wider than French Indo-China. They also failed to establish a strong legal system or an independent judiciary. Laws and judges, after all, might be used to question colonial rule. Cambodians were not allowed to participate in what Paul Mus has called the monologue of colonialism. Under the French, Cambodia was a quaint backwater, a sideshow to the main events taking place in the components of Vietnam. Cambodians, like the Lao, were the "younger brothers" of the Vietnamese, not only in terms of French investment and attention, but also for the Indo-China Communist Party when it was founded in 1930.

The descendants of the builders of Angkor, in other words, were not allowed to consider becoming free from the suffocating embraces of France and Vietnam. In this context, the Khmer Rouge catchwords "independence" and "self-mastery", and the lengths that the Khmer Rouge went to achieve them, make melancholy sense. The most enduring French contribution to Cambodia was probably in the construction of early Cambodian history and in the restoration and maintenance of temples in the Angkor complex and elsewhere. The French, of course, did not "discover" Angkor. Henri Mouhot was led to the ruins in 1860 by a Cambodian guide. He found a Buddhist monastery and over a hundred monks inside the moats of Angkor Wat. What the French accomplished by publicizing Angkor, on the other hand, played up to the feverish need for exotic places that affected nineteenth century France. In the process of saying how grand and mysterious the ruins were, they bequeathed to the Cambodians a powerful but ambiguous legacy. Independence from France came by accident for a few months in 1945, when the Japanese imprisoned French civil servants throughout Indo-China. When France returned in force in 1946, Vietnam was already independent under Ho Chi Minh, but Cambodia's young king, Norodom Sihanouk (b.1922), with no forces at his disposal, welcomed the French and for several years showed little interest in Cambodia's "struggle" for independence, dominated in Phnom Penh by the antiroyalist Democrats and in the countryside by the Vietnamese-controlled Communist insurrectionists. In 1952, Sihanouk launched a crusade for independence and, when it was granted at the end of 1953, declared himself its "father". The 47 years that followed have had, to put it mildly, their ups and downs. It is tempting, looking back through the smoke of the 1990s, 1980s and 1970s to see the so-called Sihanouk era, which ran from 1955 to 1970, as a golden egg. It seemed that way at the time to many fortunate young foreigners like myself, but even in the 1960s there were aspects of Sihanouk's rule, as well as aspects of American policy and the strategies followed by Thailand and by opposing factions in Vietnam that foreshadowed some of the horrors that came later. It was fashionable for foreigners in the 1960s either to treat Sihanouk as comical, slightly crazy and irrelevant (the prevailing American view) or as the very best that (poor old) Cambodia could do (a view peddled by the French). Sihanouk himself was more complex. While allowing himself to be compared to Angkorean kings, the Prince had few illusions, thought the worst of almost everyone, and was a contradictory mixture, like most of us, of compulsions, affections, phobias, strengths and faults. Intolerant of dissent, contemptuous of his advisors and enormously vain, his affection for Cambodia's "little people" was unfeigned and set him apart from any Cambodian ruler before or since. He

worked extremely hard. His diplomatic skills allowed Cambodia to avoid the war longer than seemed possible at the time, but when the bets were off in 1970 the Prince readily allowed foreign forces to combine with local ones to tear his beloved country apart. Despite his eagerness to be considered up to date, Sihanouk struggled throughout his time in power to keep Cambodia from being affected by anything outside its borders. He wanted Cambodia to be an "island of peace" (koh santhipheap), so as to maintain it as a Utopia (which had been an island) at a time when Cold War and the twentieth century were penetrating every nook and cranny of the world. As in the 1830s and 1840s, when the country had been a battlefield between Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia could offer no defenses of its own once the Cold War, and the twentieth century, arrived in force. The patterns of globalization that I have suggested might be bringing Cambodia's autonomous history to a close began to be felt in the 1960s, and became even more evident in Cambodia's civil war in 1970-1975. Without the Americans aiding Lon Nol and the Vietnamese helping the Khmer Rouge, the fighting would never have killed so many people, or done so much harm to the country. Without Sihanouk's blessing, the resistance would have struggled for legitimacy. The "Nixon doctrine in its purest form", combined with misconstrued MarxismLeninism and Sihanouk's appetites for flattery and revenge, came close to making Cambodia disappear. Ironically, Democratic Kampuchea, billed by the Khmer Rouge as launching Cambodia into a beautiful, uncharted future, was in fact a vainglorious attempt to return the country to its Utopian, island status, cutting it off from foreign influences and infections while seeking "independence-mastery" in a way that favored the Cambodian "race" (whatever that was) at the expense of the Vietnamese. In effect, the Khmer Rouge tried to finesse the twentieth century and to remove Cambodia from Southeast Asia. They wanted to turn the clock back, not to "year zero" ( a phrase that they never used) but to a time before corruption, streaming in from elsewhere, had occurred. Lon Nol may have had the same kind of reversion in mind when he named his futile offenses against Vietnamese "unbelievers" (tmil) in 1970 and 1971 after a pre-Angkorean kingdom, known to Chinese as Chenla. It would be wrong, however, to exaggerate the backward-looking aspects of the Khmer Rouge era, which might be better characterized as a collective leap into the dark. Although an image of Angkor appeared on the DK flag, as on every other one since independence, references to Cambodia's supposedly glorious past were rare, harsh, and without heroes. History was devalued because none of it, except the peasants' recently demonstrated liberation, was thought

to be worth preserving. Isolationism failed in late 1978 when Vietnamese armies overpowered DK. Over the next few years, Vietnam returned Cambodia to Indo-China and brought it into the confraternity of socialist nations-in the last decade that the phenomenon existed. Aside from these "openings", Cambodia was isolated from the rest of the world, and remained a plaything of larger powers. The Peoples' Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) struggled to introduce elements of socialism while restoring cultural and religious practices that had been destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. The country's isolation from Thailand, initiated under the French, continued while over half a million Cambodians sought refuge across the Thai-Cambodian border. In those camps not controlled by the Khmer Rouge, Cambodians came in contact with people from foreign countries, with western institutions, global culture and with the possibility of emigration. In the 1980s, "Cambodia" spread into southern California and into the suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, and Paris name only a few of their destinations. Approaching recent Cambodian history via the personalities of its leaders is not especially fruitful, except insofar as doing so sets the rulers in sharp contrast with each other, as each of them strove to do. To begin with, the French sought to introduce order into the chaotic administrative system that they found in Cambodia when they arrived. Sihanouk, replacing them, tried hard to personalize his rule and to inspire his "children", the Cambodian people. This flamboyance faded under the taciturn Lon Nol, while the "Wild West" character of Phnom Penh in the 1970s became, in turn, anathema to the smooth-featured, secretive Pol Pot. The Vietnamese, like the French, offered collective, depersonalized protection and guidance-the "monologue of colonialism" again-to a severely damaged country, while in the 1990s Hun Sen, like Sihanouk, has sought to impart a highly personal flavor to his time in power. At no time, except perhaps under Sihanouk in the decade following independence, has a preceding regime been given credit for anything, or has continuity been favored over change. The inability that has plagued Cambodia's politics throughout its history diminishes slightly under authoritarian rule, and respect for human rights diminishes even more. There is no inherent stability in the Cambodian "system", which is always dependent on a given regime's style, on shifting patterns of patronage, and on the premises that winners take all and that political opponents, by definition, put their lives at risk. Cambodia's entry into ASEAN in 1999 marked its belated departure from Indo-China and its entry into Southeast Asia from which it has been isolated by accident, warfare or design since the 1860s. Changes in world alignments have also altered the character of Cambodia's

foreign relations. As the century closes, several supposedly immutable "givens" no longer apply. Cambodian foreign policy no longer consists (or will no longer be allowed to consist) of playing its neighbors off against each other or of seeking a larger, more distant patron to protect it from invasion. The menace of invasion has faded, the neighbors are committed to globalization, and the larger patrons are no longer there. With the end of the Cold war, Cambodia no longer serves as anyone's sideshow or surrogate. Instead, as this often humiliating kind of history comes to an end, Cambodia reverts to the status it enjoyed on and off in times of peace following the decline of Angkor, identifiable once again as a small Buddhist kingdom with a glorious past and few resources other than those displayed on a daily basis by its resilient, courageous people. (David Chandler teaches at Georgetown University. His most recent book is Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot's Secret Prison (University of California Press). _______________________________________________________________

Cambodian Traditional Society dated back to Angkor time

Traditional Cambodian society was formed essentially of three classes - peasants, officials, and royalty. Very few Khmer became merchants, and to the extent that an urban population apart from the court and officials existed, it was composed mainly of non-Khmer, generally Chinese. This division of society probably goes back to the Angkor period when national wealth was produced from the land and collected by officials, who channeled it to the court and religious apparatus where it was used largely for building the temples and supporting the specialized population attached to them. A part of the wealth collected by officials remained in their hands for their support in lieu of salary, but this was accepted as the way in which the system naturally functioned. Each of the classes had a function believed essential for the welfare of the society, and in which the king's role was quasi-religious and ritual. Although the Angkorian state declined and disappeared, the old division of society persisted. For the mass of the population, social position was fixed, and it would have been almost unthinkable to imagine rising above the class into which on was born. Occasionally, perhaps in time of war, or for exceptional services to a powerful patron, someone from a peasant background might rise into the official class and thereby change the status of his immediate family: and children might be educated in an official family or at court to become officials, but such occurred too rarely for any expectation of social mobility to be part of public consciousness. The possibility of wealth accumulation is also limited. Land was not personal property, but in theory belonged to the king. An energetic peasant could thus not accumulate land and wealth through hard work and abstemiousness and move up the scale to rich farmer, entrepreneur, or whatever. The only possibility for wealth accumulation lay in an official career. Even there life was hazardous. Officials were of course more or less wealthy, and the official status of a family might continue for generations, but their status was not assured by any formal legality, and could be ended precipitously at royal displeasure - instance, if an official showed sign of

accumulating too much wealth or power. Even if a career did not end in disgrace, wealth accumulated into the form of gold, jewels, other precious goods, or dependents, might revert to the state at an official's death rather than passing in inheritance to his family. There was thus no incentive, or possibility, to use wealth for long-term constructive purposes or entrepreneurial investment. (Michael Vickery; Cambodia: 1975-1983, South End Press, Singapore, 1984) __________________________________________________

Two differentiated views on French Colonialism and Vietnamese imperialism over Cambodia by an American and an Australian experts on Cambodian

We can only speculate what might have happened if the nineteenth century had not been marked by Frances advance into Vietnam and subsequently into Cambodia. Yet while I can only be speculation, the likely lines of historical development that might have affected Cambodia do not seem difficult to trace. Without the French advance it seems hard to think of Cambodia being left for long to play its buffer zone role. Eclipse as a state seemed - though it can never be argued in any certain fashion the most likely fate in store for this painfully weak country. The decision of the French I Vietnam to extend control over Cambodia beginning in the 1860s may therefore be seen as ensuring the states survival. Source: Milton Osborne; Southeast Asia: an Introductory History; George Allen & Unwin; Sidney, 1983 ____________________________________________________

For Cambodia, the choice was only between a serial rapist (French colonialism) and a serial killer (Vietnamese imperialism)

Khmer rulers of the mid-nineteenth century acquiesced in the establishment of a French protectorate over their kingdom. Because they saw it as a way of ensuring their national survival against local foreign foes. Yet, while in the short run Cambodia may have been "saved" (Although this was hardly the purpose of Frances imperial intervention), in the long run it probably lost more than it gained from French colonial rule. Richard Butwell, Southeast Asia: a Political Introduction, (Praeger Publishers, New York, 1975) ____________________________________________________ Conservatism and underdevelopment were preserved in Cambodia under French

colonialism Consider the contrast between Cambodia and Indonesia. In the former the real impact of French colonialism was not felt until the beginning of the twentieth century. The King of Cambodia continued to reign and to remain for the overwhelming majority of his subjects the almost divine centre of the world. Western ideas and Western education had only barely penetrated Cambodia before the Second World War, and the impact of the French controlled-colonial economy had little clear effect on the bulk of the population. Western education had had an impact in Indonesia by the end of the 1930s that was an order that simply could not be compared with the situation in Cambodia where by 1939 fewer than a dozen Cambodians had completed the equivalent of a French secondary school education. Cambodia, Laos and to some extent Malaya showed the degree to which an alliance of interest between members of the traditional ruling class and the colonial power could act to inhibit the development of nationalist activity. The alliance involved did not just relate to personal concerns such as a measure of power and wealth. In the political and social climate of the 1920s and 1930s it was possible for Cambodian and Laotian kings and princes, and for Malay sultans to feel that their countrymen were benefiting from the operation of the colonial system." Source: Milton Osborne; Southeast Asia: an Introductory History; George Allen & Unwin; Sidney, 1983 _________________________________________________________

Cambodian Penchant for Brutality is in the Khmer Mores

These stories (brutality) do not come from Pol Pots Cambodia, but from a book by Bun Chan Mol, published in 1973 and relating his own experiences among the Cambodian Issaraks in the 1940s. He himself was political leader of the group carrying out the execution of the enemy for whom the prisoners were accused of working was the French colonial administration, and the title of the book is Charet Khmer, "Khmer Mores." Bun Chan Mol gave up Issarak activities in 1949, and one of the reasons, he tells us in his book, was his inability to either tolerate or suppress the gratuitous brutality of his underlings who considered such method a normal way of dealing with enemies and who took obvious pleasure in it. Besides their delight in inhuman torture, he complains about their indiscipline, refusal to investigate thoroughly before taking action, arbitrary exercise of power, sometimes for petty personal reasons, and suspicion of anyone, including himself, their political chief, who objected. He calls these practices part of "Khmer Mores," the title of his book, most of which dealt with the decline of Khmer politics in the 1950s and 1960s.

Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-82; (South End Press, Singapore, 1984) _______________________________________________________________

Cambodian Politics and Buddhism and the perpetuation of inequality

In the face of the gradual disaffection from traditional Buddhism which Ebihara noticed, the Cambodia elite sought to reemphasize religion as a technique for repressing the new desire for social mobility. In 1955, when revolutionary forces were threatening, a newspaper representing Sihanouks new coalition of the right maintained editorially that the country should be ruled by its natural leaders, who are the rich and powerful. The less fortunate should not envy them and try to take their place, for each persons situation in the present is determined by his past actions. The poor should accept their fate, live virtuously, and try to accumulate merit in order to improve their station in another existence. Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-82; (South End Press, Singapore, 1984)