Thailand-Cambodian Border Conflict and World Court Case of Preah Vihear

Modern Asian Studies 32, 4 (1998), pp. 849–890.
 1998 Cambridge University Press

Printed in the United Kingdom
Borders on the Fantastic: Mimesis, Violence,

and Landscape at the Temple of Preah Vihear
P. CUASAY
University of Washington
Peace based on a fallacy is not for the living. The living must and shall demand the
truth, for such is the way of nations, and such is the way of man.—Seni Pramoj,
speaking at the World Court, March 27, 1962 (Pleadings, 564)
On 15 June 1962, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) pro-

nounced judgment on a dispute between Cambodia, formerly a
colony of France, and Thailand, formerly called Siam, a neighboring
kingdom which had never been formally colonized. The dispute
regarded territorial sovereignty over the area of an ancient
Brahmanic temple named Preah Vihear (following the Khmer lan-
guage of Cambodia) or Phra Viharn (following Thai language). The
Temple is perched high on a spur of the Dangrek mountain chain
which roughly forms the boundary between both countries. North of
the Dangrek lies the Khorat Plateau of Northeast Thailand, while
to the south the Temple affords a magnificent view of the forested
Cambodian plain below. The judgment was peculiar in that it relied
upon absence to startling effect. Applying the principle qui tacet con-
sentire videtur si loqui debuisset ac potuisset (Judgment, 23) [He who keeps
silent is held to consent if he must and can speak—ibid., 96], ICJ
held that Thailand’s failure to protest the inaccuracy of a map pur-
porting to reflect the watershed line between the two states, and thus
by the Treaty of 1904 the international boundary between them,
constituted tacit acceptance of the map line as the line established
by treaty. The effects of this reasoning were as follows: (a) a gross
representation, a 1:200,000 scale map that made a considerable
error in placing the watershed, was held to fix the boundary, sup-
planting the treaty text, which specifies a physical fact, the water-
shed line, as the boundary; (b) concrete acts of sovereignty on the
ground were largely dismissed as being ‘exclusively the acts of local,
provincial authorities’ (Judgment, 30) while mere inferences about
behavior taken to be absence of official protest received legal force;
and (c) the ‘general political conditions existing in Asia at this
period,’ (Judgment, 128) i.e., the enormous facts of French colonial-
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850 P. CUASAY
ism, were ignored. The response to the judgment in Thailand was

incredulity and outrage. The World Court reasoning was seen, in the
words of Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, as a ‘miscarriage of
justice,’ while other ‘Officials contacted were puzzled that the court
based its judgment on a map, considered actually only a rough
sketch.’ (Bangkok Post, June 18, 1962)
Looking back on the oral pleadings and the judgment together
with the dissenting opinions, what seems truly strange is that if ICJ,
in resolving the dispute with a map, hoped to uphold the stability
and finality of conventional agreements between States rather than
capitulate to achievements of sheer conquering force, then the basis
for its judgment ran exactly in reverse. Dramatizing the failure to
protest, the World Court seemed to announce not an end to violence,
but a need to perpetually anticipate it, to respond with unmistakable
vigor to any threat against sovereignty, real or imagined. Envisioning
this kind of fortress mentality, where every uncertainty in repres-
entation might open a credibility gap and every silence might be a
doorway to danger, the World Court of 1962 may appear to us today
as a haunted Hague, encircled by the ghosts of the Cold War. But
already at that time, other ghosts were conjured up during the case
of Preah Vihear. Acts of the delimitation commissioners of 1905–
1908 and their dead presidents were scrutinized for their effect on
the Thai–Cambodian border, and the meeting of a dead prince and
a dead archaeologist became fraught with consequence. And haunt-
ing for its absence among these ghosts of colonialism was any men-
tion of the contemporary Holy Men’s Rebellion that so preoccupied
the populace of this borderland which, before consolidation of
modern nation states, had been a largely autonomous collection of
tributory principalities in the Khorat marginal highlands, an area
the Siamese Kings called Forest Khmer Domains [huamuang khamen
padong in Thai]. This paper is a route map to these mutual hauntings,
as I brush international law against the grain on a sightseeing tour
of the many sites at which this border’s history, in words Counsel
for Thailand used in the case, ‘borders on the fantastic.’ (Pleadings,
621)
Picturing Absence
Let us see, first of all, how the court read a gift of souvenir photographs.
In the written memorials and oral pleadings, both Cambodia and
Thailand highlighted one event from 1930 as a clear display of the
THE TEMPLE OF PREAH VIHEAR 851
meaning of their conduct. It was precisely this event which ICJ also
spotlighted in 1962 as a clear example of their reasoning.
In this connection, much the most significant episode consisted of the visit
paid to the Temple in 1930 by Prince Damrong, formerly Minister of the
Interior, and at this time President of the Royal Institute of Siam. . . . The
visit was part of an archaeological tour made by the Prince with the permis-
sion of the King of Siam, and it clearly had a quasi-official character. When
the Prince arrived at Preah Vihear, he was officially received there by the
French Resident for the adjoining Cambodian province, on behalf of the
Resident Superior, with the French flag flying. The Prince could not possibly
have failed to see the implications of a reception of this character. A clearer
affirmation of title on the French Indo-Chinese side can scarcely be
imagined. It demanded a reaction. Thailand did nothing. Furthermore,
when Prince Damrong on his return to Bangkok sent the French resident
some photographs of the occasion, he used language which seems to admit
that France, through her Resident, had acted as the host country.
. . . Looking at the incident as a whole, it appears to have amounted to a

tacit recognition by Siam of the sovereignty of Cambodia (under French
Protectorate) over Preah Vihear, through a failure to react in any way, on
an occasion that called for a reaction in order to affirm or preserve title in
the face of an obvious rival claim. (Judgment, 30–31)
In a dissenting opinion, Wellington Koo of Nationalist China made

out an entirely different picture and ultimately concluded the ICJ
reasoning was ‘strained and unreal.’ (Judgment, 98)
The incident of a visit of Prince Damrong to the Temple of Preah Vihear in
January 1930 and the presence of the French Resident of the neighbouring
Cambodian province of Kompong Thom on the scene in his official uniform
with decorations and the appearance of the French flag on a pole in front
of his own pavilion is regarded as particularly significant. But the facts are
simple and do not support the claim of significance assigned to it. The
Prince was no longer Minister of the Interior; he was President of the Royal
Institute of Siam. . . . He made the trip . . . in the latter capacity, accompan-
ied by his three daughters and a suite of officials. The French Resident had
with him his assistant and the noted French archaeologist Henri Parment-
ier. When the parties met on the Temple grounds, speeches of welcome
and thanks were exchanged and toasts were drunk. The Resident said he
had come to present the compliments of the Superior Resident and his own
to the Prince for his ‘reputation as a sincere friend of France and her sub-
jects and proteges’ and also as a well-known archaeologist. No allusion was
made by the French Resident to any question about the territorial sover-
eignty of the Temple, though Parmentier, speaking as a fellow archaeologist
and extolling the fame of the Prince for his interest in archaeology, referred
to the Temple as ‘another monument of our Cambodia.’ The Prince, in his
reply, said that ‘he had come to see the Temple and had nothing to do with
politics.’
852 P. CUASAY
According to a statement of his daughter who accompanied him on the

visit, he suggested to the French officer ‘to get out of his uniform.’ The
display of his national flag by a foreign official, even by a private Occidental,
was not an uncommon sight in an Asiatic country during that epoch; it may
or may not have displeased the Prince. There was no clear cause for the
Prince to make a protest at the time or to ask his Government to lodge one
in Bangkok, though in an affidavit of one of his daughters who was with the
Prince during this visit, it is stated that he privately considered the hoisting
of the French flag at the place of their meeting and the donning of his
official uniform by the French officer to be ‘impudent.’ The despatch of a
letter of thanks and some photographs taken during his visit by Prince
Damrong to the French Minister for transmission to the French authorities
in Indo-China meant no more than a customary act of Oriental courtesy.
In a word, the incident viewed in the light of available evidence and the
then prevailing conditions in Siam—and in fact in other parts of Asia—did
not have the meaning and significance sought to be inferred from it.
. . . Even if this presumption [that the French presence asserted a sovereign

claim to the Temple] is correct, it does not necessarily follow that [Siam]
should not have waited for a more propitious occasion to make [a protest]
than in the actual circumstances prevailing at that time. The reason why
‘he did not ask the Government to lodge a protest’ was eloquently stated
by his daughter, Princess Phun Phitsamai Diskul, who went with him during
the visit to the Temple, to be as follows:
‘It was generally known at the time that we only give the French an
excuse to seize more territory by protesting. Things had been like that
since they came into the river Chao Phraya with their gunboats and their
seizure of Chantaburi.’–
In view of the history of the relations between Siam and French Indo-China
. . . the Princess’s explanation seems natural and reasonable. It was a situ-
ation not peculiar to Siam. It was, generally speaking, the common experi-
ence of most Asiatic States in their intercourse with the Occidental Powers
during this period of colonial expansion. (Judgment, 89–91)
Koo’s interpretation was, however, a minority view. Why did ICJ

vote nine to three that Preah Vihear belonged to Cambodia on the
argument that the absence of protest constitutes acceptance of a
map line deviating both from the text of the treaty and the facts of
geography? It seems ICJ was impressed by the Cambodian view of
Prince Damrong’s visit because photographs, souvenirs the Prince
sent to the French along with a thank-you note, were viewed as show-
ing acquiescence to the display of French sovereignty. As the donor
of these souvenirs, Prince Damrong, according to the Maussian
(1924) view of gift exchange, should appear superior to the receiver.
However, a souvenir photograph is, from one perspective, a mere
representation of an actual event, so the souvenir as gift refers back
to an original moment. If this original moment were to be perceived
as the first gift, then the souvenir would become the imperfect
return. The souvenir photograph, on the hypothesis, is thus a gift
that destroys its own status as the more original and prestigious
offering, a gift that reduces its donor to the abnegation of a sacrifier
(see Mauss, 1899). But this logic depends on the crucial transition
from seeing the souvenir as the original gift to seeing it as an imper-
fect counter-gift. At stake therefore is the status of a photograph.
Is the photograph itself the object bestowed through ‘a customary
act of Oriental courtesy?’ Or is the photograph just a parasitic copy,
a reproduction of an original scene? And even if the latter were
granted, on what basis is the original scene recognized as the first
gift, the gift that calls forth the souvenir as a counter-gift irremedi-
ably counterfeit, or debased?
However habitual it may be to view a photograph as a copy of a
prior scene, the disappearance of the photograph itself is accomp-
lished by its positioning within this legal case. The photograph of
Prince Damrong at Preah Vihear is a piece of evidence in the Inter-
national Court of Justice, a world court from which there is no
appeal. Evidence must be seen in the eyes of the law and considered
only with regard to what it represents, not what it is. By being
treated as evidence, the photograph itself fades from view, to be
replaced by what it represents, some purchase on the legal facts of
the case. Yet this effect of the legalistic context, like the photograph
itself, also fades from view by disavowing its status as an effect. The
power of the court to determine how a photograph must be perceived
effortlessly obscures itself behind the ‘natural’ power of photographs
to represent reality. Because the technology of the camera is natural-
ized and serves as a taken-for-granted modern substitute for eye-
witnesses, the court manages to overlook its own determination of
the evidence in the very act of ‘just looking’ at photographs. Put
another way, the camera cannot lie but it can misdirect. The court,
constrained to direct its attention to what the photograph shows, is
at the same time misdirected because it overlooks the photograph
itself as a gift object.
But if the gift must be misrecognized as evidence for facts that
lie outside the frame of the photograph’s existence as a gift, this
still does not require a viewer to interpret those facts as the donation
by France of a first gift which elicited souvenirs from Thailand as
counter-gifts. In fact, a photograph cannot show diachronic succes-
sion, it can only show signs of relative status at a particular time.
854 P. CUASAY
To ascribe first donor status to the party who displays greater rela-
tive prestige is only possible through remembering what the require-
ment to view photographs as evidence has just forgotten, namely
that the giver of a gift is in a higher position than the recipient.
Having forgotten that a Thai Prince was the giver of souvenirs, the
court now seeks in the souvenir photographs signs that would indic-
ate which nation is higher, Thailand or Cambodia, for by a reasoning
just now recalled, whoever is higher must be the first donor. Thus
do symbols of power become not merely its legitimating ideology but
its crucial basis. The theatrical setting—the French flag fluttering
on a secluded mountaintop, the decorated French uniform glittering
in the Oriental sun—is heightened through the play-within-a-play
staging of evidence before the judges of the world.
The force of that theatricality suggests that the photographs had
to reflect an acknowledgment of French sovereignty, otherwise the
French would be in danger of appearing inappropriate and out of
place among their own symbols. The French are caught in a rivalry
with their own regalia that implies a doubly threatening image: both
the flimsy theoreticality of colonial grandeur and the disturbing
resemblance between French officials and Oriental potentates in a
common reliance on quaint symbols. Both would make a mockery of
their mimicry of themselves (see Bhabha, 1984). Sir Frank Soskice,
former Attorney General of Great Britain, alluded to this threat
(perhaps with English relish in French discomfort) in defending
Prince Damrong’s lack of protest.
No doubt he could have taken all sorts of ridiculous steps quite out of keep-
ing with the triviality of the occasion. Prince Damrong, as Professor Reuter
said, had a sense of humour. Professor Reuter omitted to refer to the one
course which a sensible person with a sense of humour would have taken and
which Prince Damrong did adopt, that is to say, to ignore what he regarded
as a piece of upstart arrogance. It would not be the first time in the history
of mankind that a man who held the positions of dignity which Prince Dam-
rong had held had chosen to disregard an indiscretion on the part of a
comparatively junior, swollen headed official. (emphasis mine)
Really, the ownership of Phra Viharn cannot depend upon trumpery incid-
ents of this sort. He sent photographs and a polite and amiable letter of
thanks as an indication that so far as he was concerned no significance was
attached to what he nevertheless undoubtedly regarded as a piece of insol-
ence. (Pleadings, 636)
To recognize the gift of souvenir photographs, as such, would thus

entail revealing the ‘trumpery’ of French colonialism in the person
of a ‘junior, swollen headed official’ indulging in ‘upstart arrogance.’
The only way out of this dilemma is to mis-take the gift for a repay-
ment, a kind of tribute, and ultimately an admission of being
indebted to the hospitality of the French as sovereign authorities
over the Temple.
A Gift for Nothing
The French Resident and Henri Parmentier received gifts of photo-

graphs in 1930, but in 1908, it was officials of the Siamese Govern-
ment, among them Prince Damrong, who accepted the gift of a series
of maps of the frontier regions common to Siam and French Indo-
China. Among them was the map that came to be called Annex I,
the map on which Cambodia rested her claim to the Temple of Preah
Vihear. The prominent Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of
State, and at the time of this case adviser to President Kennedy for
NATO affairs, led Counsel for Cambodia in rendering its version of
the reception of these maps. So effective was this speech of March
21 that a more muted and compressed rendition is virtually repeated
in the text of the judgment.
May I ask the Court to look once more at the scene in Bangkok in the late
summer and fall of 1908. The town is inundated with copies of the Dangrek
map—that is, the Annex I map—along with the other ten maps published
at the same time. Practically everyone in town receives copies. The Minister
of Foreign Affairs receives 44 copies. Surely he must have been interested.
There are eight or ten former members of the Siamese Delimitation Com-
mission. Each of them receives a copy. Even the Siamese legations in
London, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Washington received them—two copies
each. Then the French Minister in Bangkok, thinking that the town was
not sufficiently supplied, in September 1908 asked for, and presumably
received, four more sets.
Why does M. Rolin [a French lawyer defending Thailand] suppose these
Siamese wanted the maps, including the Annex I map? Did they want them
to look at? Oh no, said M. Rolin, they were too busy for that. They had
other things to do. To go to the Royal Ballet, perhaps. But suppose the
Commissioners didn’t look at them, what about the Siamese Government?
What about the Minister of Foreign Affairs? He received 44 copies, whereas
the Commissioners only had one copy each . . .
Apparently not one person in the Siamese Government thought even of
taking a peek at the maps, or of drafting a note for the Siamese Minister
856 P. CUASAY
of Foreign Affairs to send to Paris—which might have read something like

this:
‘We have received your kind gift of 44 sets of unilateral maps prepared
at Paris, representing, in spite of their title, only the view of the French
Government and the French Commissioners. We must note, further, that
no frontier in the Dangrek was ever agreed upon by the Mixed Commis-
sion, although one of the maps shows a frontier there. This obviously
cannot be considered as binding upon Siam. With renewed expressions
of my highest consideration, etc., etc.’ . . .
Actually, someone in the Siamese Government did have the time and inter-
est, if not to write a letter, at least to speak to the French Minister at
Bangkok; and the Minister wrote a letter. The Siamese official in question
was none other than our old friend, Prince Damrong, who was then Minister
of the Interior and who, 25 years later (so Thailand presently relates) would
be busy exercising sovereignty over Preah Vihear.
What did Prince Damrong say to the French Ambassador. Did he protest?
Did he point out that the Dangrek frontier was merely a figment of the
French officer’s imagination? I shall not keep the Court in suspense. Prince
Damrong asked for 15 more copies of the maps. And his reason? He
explained that he wanted to give these maps to the Siamese provincial
officials . . . Could it have been that Prince Damrong wanted the Siamese
provincial authorities to have copies of the map so that they could tell where
the frontier was not? (Pleadings, 454–455)
Acheson assumes that the primary aim of these maps and the first
thing anyone looking at them would do is to trace the boundaries of
one’s country to make sure it’s all there, nothing missing. Thai his-
torian Thongchai Winidjakul (1994) has shown how mapping Siam
indeed resulted in the construction of the ‘geo-body,’ and argued
that the Bangkok elite and colonial powers worked together to cap-
ture territory in grid lines. Thus the Minutes of the first Mixed
Delimitation Commission, a body composed of French and Thai
members and charged with tracing out the boundaries as defined by
the Treaty of 1904, reveal that both sides desired to obtain maps of
the frontier. But they also show the desire was much more general
than, and unconnected with, the particular delimitation task of the
Commission.
In the meeting of 29 November 1905, the President of the French
section, Colonel Bernard, thanked his Siamese colleagues for leaving
the technical work and surveying to French cartographers. General
Mom Chatidej Udom replied to Bernard saying ‘that by leaving it
to the French Commission to draw up the map of the frontier region,
the Siamese Government had indeed wished to show that it had
complete confidence in the French officers.’ (cited in Judgment, 81)
Then on 17 January 1906, Bernard proposed that French officers
should survey further than the immediate vicinity of the border ‘so
as to give a more complete map of the frontier region. At that moment
there was no satisfactory map in existence and it would be useful for
the two countries to have’ (cited in Judgment, 81; emphasis mine).
Sir Percy Spender of Australia added in his dissenting opinion that
the French Commission was engaged in work which went far beyond
the work of delimiting frontiers. In Colonel Bernard’s report of 14
April 1908 to the French Minister of the colonies, it is clear that
this work included ‘ethnographical research and cartographical work.
Attached to his report, in addition to all the Minutes of the Mixed
Commission, were a number of reports by different officers attached
to his Mission’ (Judgment, 140). Wellington Koo concluded from
all this that the ‘requested map was a separate matter not directly
connected with the work of delimitation . . . and, as such, when it
was made, certainly it could not be regarded as constituting or imply-
ing any binding obligation on Thailand as to the character of the
map to be made’ (Judgement, 81). Thus when the maps of various
frontiers were transmitted to Bangkok, it should not be considered
as the delivery of maps that the Siamese Commissioners requested
and were now called upon to accept or reject, but merely as the
distribution of a ‘general map of the whole frontier region’ that ‘had
formed the subject of an exchange of friendly remarks between the
Presidents of the two national Commissions.’ (Judgment, 82)
Sir Percy Spender picked up the story of how the map series,
including Annex I, did arrive in Bangkok. In July of 1907,
Colonel Bernard, then in France, sought the approval of the French Foreign
Minister of the Colonies [to publish the maps, and] requested provision of
funds for that purpose. The decision to publish the maps was made by the
Minister; Siam was not consulted about it. The printing and publication of
the map did not follow, as a matter of course, from the operations of the
Mixed Commission in 1905–1907. Ultimately, funds were authorized for
publication of the ‘Bernard Commission map’ to be provided out of the
budget of Indo-China. (Judgment, 126)
1,000 copies were ordered. 700 were for French Ministry of the
Colonies for despatch to Indo-China. 100 were for sale by the pub-
lisher. 50 for the Siamese Government ‘were handed personally
to the Siamese Minister in Paris without any covering letter. . . .
No comment from Siam was at any time sought. Indeed, none I
858 P. CUASAY
[Spender] am satisfied was expected’ (ibid.). In these circumstances,

wrote Wellington Koo,
It was certainly not unusual for Prince Damrong to have expressed his
appreciation upon receiving an extra copy of the whole series from the
French Minister who obviously did it as a special act of courtesy. Nor is
it difficult to understand that he should have requested more copies for
distribution to the Siamese provincial authorities, especially when it is
recalled that at the time Siam did not yet have a good modern map showing
the whole frontier region between Siam and French Indo-China, and that
the Siamese Government had previously requested the President of the
French Commission to have one made by the French topographical officers.
(Judgment, 84)
In this aspect of the case, there was a fundamental misapprehen-
sion regarding the gift of French maps which were developed out of
a mutual desire for general maps, in response to a friendly request,
and distributed as an act of courtesy. Dean Acheson and another of
Cambodia’s lawyers, Paul Reuter (identified by the Bangkok Post as
legal adviser to the French Foreign Ministry), succeeded in por-
traying the passive reception of the maps as acquiescence. For them,
acceptance of the maps created an implied conventional agreement
between Siam and France to the effect that the map lines reflect
and supersede the treaty terms. But as Sir Percy Spender observed,
‘It can scarcely be contended that the act of France in delivering to
Siam copies of a map which were at the same time delivered by her
to third parties evidenced any intention on her part to enter into an
international engagement’ (Judgment, 139). How, then, could the
World Court hold that ‘The map (whether in all respects accurate
by reference to the true watershed line or not) was accepted by the
parties in 1908. . . . The Parties at that time adopted an interpreta-
tion of the treaty settlement which caused the map line, in so far
as it may have departed from the line of watershed, to prevail over
the relevant clause of the treaty’? (Judgment, 34).
It may help to recall the threat posed by Prince Damrong’s sou-
venir photographs while following Sir Frank Soskice’s oral argument
against the notion that publishing maps is an assertion of
sovereignty.
Thailand, on the other hand, so Professor Reuter said, did nothing. She
never exercised sovereignty; although she knew of the French assertion of
sovereignty, she never put forward her own claim; until at last, after 50
years of silence and inaction, she claimed Phra Viharn in 1954, when all
the people who had taken part in the events 1904–1908 were dead and the
Cambodian archives had been lost . . .
Let us consider whether such indeed are the facts. France, we are told,
asserted her sovereignty in 1908. How? By publishing Annex I. A country,
I submit, does not assert sovereignty over a tract of territory simply by
publishing a map. A tract of territory is not something abstract or intan-
gible. It is susceptible of physical acts of possession, and no assertion of
sovereignty over it is effective in law unless it includes such physical acts.
. . . What did France do on the spot in 1908 to assert her sovereignty . . .?
The answer is, nothing; not merely nothing in 1908, but nothing for many
years. . . . So we find, on investigation, that what is described as an assertion
of French sovereignty consists of the bare publication of Annex I in 1908,
followed by nearly 40 years in which France is not shown to have done
anything to exercise sovereignty at all. (Pleadings, 325)
Thailand did nothing. France did nothing. One or the other has to
take the blame for this nothing. The threat of colonial triviality and
trumpery concealed in the photographs has now become a threat to
grand images of State conduct. Unless merely publishing the maps
were hailed as sovereign conduct, the embarrassing matter of do-
nothing sovereignty would remain at-large. Since sovereignty is
emphatically, even obsessively, not nothing, the World Court was, in
effect, asked to guarantee a difference between this nothing and
the sovereignty of States, at least developed States. Therefore this
nothing, this tainted lack of sure control or visible power, must not
hide like some legendary bandit in the gaps of a ‘general and invis-
ible administrative activity’ that is ‘without relevance in so far as
the frontier areas or the Temple are concerned’ to ambush the pre-
tensions of States at inopportune moments (Pleadings, 186; Roger
Pinto for Cambodia dismissing alleged acts of Thai sovereignty).
This threat of doing nothing must be trapped, located, and mapped
to a State. Furthermore, in the very act of being mapped down, noth-
ing or lack must be displaced from posing a threat to sovereignty,
nothing must be seen as recuperable within the State economy.
Soskice put the stakes this high in his closing speech:
After all, the law has to consider and weigh in the balance a formal treaty
on the one side, and an unrecorded implied variation on the other. . . .
Mr. Acheson argued that Prince Damrong, when in 1908 he received the
Annex I map, might have written back making it plain that the boundary
marked on this map was not to be taken as binding on Thailand . . . If
Prince Damrong might have written in these terms, why can it not equally
be said that the French authorities when sending the maps should have
written to Prince Damrong saying: ‘Here are the maps—they involve Thai-
land foregoing the Temple and other areas of territory which she would
have gotten under the watershed boundary laid down by Article I of the
860 P. CUASAY
1904 Treaty. May we take it that Thailand agrees to forego this territory?’
. . . The fact is, neither side wrote in these terms. Both left the matter in
obscurity. It is at this period of time, 54 years later. not easy to say what
was in the mind of either side. Nobody now will ever know. Conceivably
both sides were a trifle neglectful—neither possibly being particularly on
the alert or mistrustful of the other. But Mr. President, Members of the
Court, solemn treaty rights cannot be abrogated by chance. They cannot be
changed in the comparatively informal way in which some systems of
domestic law allow purely private commercial bargains to be changed, made
between private individuals or commercial concerns . . . Boundary lines
between great countries cannot be drawn by accident. (Pleadings, 646)
Both sides left a matter of sovereignty in obscurity, or what is equally

as threatening, both were in danger of being seen as playing the
game of Statehood with trumpery cards of neglect, accident, and
casual conduct.
The threat of displaying sovereignty in this light runs through the
opinions, and in every case the threat has to be displaced. Sir Percy
Spender wrote:
Although much has been heard in this case about the importance of final
and settled frontiers, apart from the one incident of Prince Damrong’s visit
to the Temple, neither state appears to have been aware of what the other
was doing. It is significant that the Governor of the Cambodian province
adjacent to the Temple [Suon Bonn, called as a witness for Cambodia] had
not the slightest idea where the frontier lines were. All he appeared to
know was that the Temple was, so he claimed, within Cambodian territory.
(Judgment, 138)
Spender developed at length the argument that although nothing in

the Minutes of the Mixed Commission specifies the decision taken
on the borderline in the Dangrek mountains, this nothing really sig-
nifies delimitation by simple reference to the 13 February 1904
Treaty definition of watershed. Another dissenting judge, Moreno
Quintana of Argentina, wrote:
. . . there was performance of concurrent and reciprocally unnoticed admin-
istrative activities. Even if known, these activities would have been the sub-
ject of objection or different interpretations. All this gives the impression
that both Cambodia and Thailand lived for more than half a century with-
out being particularly certain of their sovereign rights over the temple area.
(Judgment, 72)
He noted that Annex I map ‘ bears no date and is not signed by any
authorized experts, still less by the contracting parties’ which would
be ‘the indispensable condition for its validity’ (Judgment, 70). He
cited Article 29 of the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919, that holds
‘when there is a discrepancy concerning a frontier delimitation
between the text of a treaty and maps, it is the text and not the
maps which is final’ (cited in ibid.). Finally, he appealed to ‘adequate
expert opinion’ (op. cit., 71) to find the watershed. In short, he fixed
upon scientific clarity to exclude any ambiguities about sovereignty.
As for the majority opinion, do-nothing sovereignty was domestic-
ated as the doing-nothing which constitutes acquiescence. Here is
how Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, elaborated his agreement with the
majority:
There can be little doubt that Cambodia’s legal position was weakened by
the fact that . . . it was not until 1949 that any protest on the diplomatic
level was made about local acts of Thailand in violation, or at any rate in
implied denial, of that sovereignty. But France . . . was entitled to assume
from the conduct of the central Siamese authorities that the latter accepted
the frontier as mapped at Preah Vihear. On that basis, but on that basis only,
France could safely ignore the activities of local Siamese authorities. . . .
Clearly, if Thailand could now be heard to deny this acceptance, the whole
legal foundation on which the relative inactivity of France and Cambodia
in this region was fully explicable would be destroyed. (Judgment, 64;
emphasis mine)
The Siamese authorities deliberately left the whole thing to the French
elements involved, and thus accepted the risk that the maps might prove
inaccurate in some respects. Consequently, it was for them to verify the
results, if they wished to do so, in whatever way was most appropriate in
the circumstances, e.g., by consulting neutral experts. . . .
One may sympathize with Siam’s lack of topographical and cartographical

expertise at this time, but one is dealing with a sovereign independent State
to whom certain rules of law apply. . . . In short, a principle akin to that of
caveat emptor is relevant. This is so in all walks of life. A man who consults
a lawyer, doctor, architect, or other expert, is held . . . to accept the possibil-
ity that the expert may be mistaken. (Judgment, 58)
Notably absent from Fitzmaurice’s view of maps as merchandise is
the idea that courtesy could remain separate from politics. Rather,
a modern state must subordinate all domains to one imperative:
coherence, self-sameness, a consistent national will. States need to
form contracts and a contract ‘requires . . . a ‘‘sovereign individual’’
defined at once by the sovereignty of his will and by an obligation
to abjure willfulnes . . . That is to say, what defines the freedom and
autonomy of the individual, the principle of identity and self-identity over
time and circumstance that makes promise keeping possible, is the
ability, or . . . the ‘‘duty, of resembling oneself ’’ ’ (Seltzer, 1992: 73).
ICJ Vice-President Ricardo Alfaro of Panama greatly stressed this
862 P. CUASAY
duty’s importance for contractual relations when he sided with the

majority.
A State must not be permitted to benefit by its own inconsistency to the
prejudice of another State. . . . The party which by its recognition, its repres-
entation, its declaration, its conduct or its silence has maintained an atti-
tude manifestly contrary to the right it is claiming before an international
tribunal is precluded from claiming that right. (Judgment, 40)
[The basis of this principle is] the good faith that must prevail in interna-
tional relations inasmuch as inconsistency of conduct or opinion on the
part of a State to the prejudice of another is incompatible with good faith.
[Secondly,] the necessity for security in contractual relationships.
(Judgment, 42)
Such a necessity requires a sovereign state to be on the alert against

the merest suggestion of a rival claim or risk having its politeness
mistaken for its policy. In 1930, Prince Damrong’s polite overlooking
of the French Resident’s behavior became in the World Court a polit-
ical abandonment of sovereignty because Thailand’s ‘failure to pro-
test’ violated Thailand’s duty to resemble itself, to show always and
everywhere the same face of determination to retain Preah Vihear.
In 1908, Prince Damrong’s request for more maps that he, in turn,
would circulate as gifts was transformed from being a favor of cour-
tesy into a ratification of an implied convention, again through a
failure to protest. In the post-colonial context, this unfulfilled duty
could be seen as the contemporary version of Oriental lack, an
unmanly passivity inconsistent with the evidence for Thai sover-
eignty on the ground.
In fact, a typographical error, rather than a cartographical mis-
take, spelled out this inconsistency in an uncanny way during the
proceedings. Soskice on the afternoon of 13 March 1962 said:
I am indebted to the courtesy of Professor Pinto, who was so good as to
bring to my notice that there is a slight error in one of the paragraphs of
the Rejoinder [of Thailand] . . . Paragraph 67, as it at present reads, begins
with the sentence: ‘There is in fact inconsistency with the exercise of Thai
sovereignty.’
Unfortunately the word ‘no’ has been omitted by mistake, and the text
should read: ‘There is in fact no inconsistency with the exercise of Thai
sovereignty.’ (Pleadings, 321)
This slip is spooky or uncanny because it is the failure to insert a

‘no’ in 1908 that was held to preclude Thailand from claiming the
map was vitiated by error, and this lack of the sovereign ‘no’ will be
seen to be (videtur in the Latin axiom applied) acquiescence.
If this nothing was not laid at Thailand’s feet, then the threat
looming behind the choice between ‘Thailand did nothing’ and
‘France did nothing’ may erupt into the disturbing possibility that
sovereignty, if not saying ‘no’, is nothing much, or at least nothing
much in the evidence. Against this ambiguity and anxiety, the map
was everything. Commenting on this displacement from sovereign
acts to sovereignty by maps, and the consequent rise of caveat emptor
to the status of international law, the Thai Ministry of Foreign
Affairs on September 5, 1962 observed: ‘A general principle of pri-
vate law1 is applied to an international law case . . . in a manner
repugnant to reasons. It is doubtful whether the rule so freely bor-
rowed from the general private law principle has actually received
recognition in the Asian region, for none of the cited or known cases
on this point concerns this part of the world’ (FAB, 136). Their next
observation was that ‘In this case, the Court for the first time applies
the principle of acquiescence to a situation which does not in fact exist.
Annex I map never does represent any factual situation, as France
has not exercised sovereignty over Phra Viharn so as to create a
factual situation, in which Thailand can be said to have acquiesced’
(FAB, 137; emphasis mine). It is precisely this situation of ghost
sovereignty which properly speaking does not quite exist which must
be deflected by conjuring up the principle of acquiescence.
Thus gifts of maps in 1908, like gifts of photographs in 1930,
were used to make absence appear with a determined legal sense
in 1962. The displacement was not altogether invisible in 1908; it
consisted in depending on dependency.
Such maps of her own as Siam had in 1908 were uncoordinated. The receipt
of these maps drawn by French officers must no doubt have provided an
occasion in its way. They were however French maps expressed in Roman charac-
ters. ‘French maps,’ stated Commandant Montguers, the President of the
Mixed Commission under the Treaty of 1907, in a letter of 17 June 1908
to the Governor-General of Indo-China, were ‘of no great use’ to Siam.
(Judgment, 127; emphasis mine)
Therefore after the first and second Mixed Delimitation Commis-
sions of the Treaties of 1904 and 1907, a Transcription Committee
1
The legal principle of estoppel, preclusion, or acquiescence is translated in Thai
as lak kodmai pidpaak, which stands out so strongly from the surrounding legal verbi-
age that it may be glossed as ‘the shut-your-mouth principle.’
864 P. CUASAY
had to be assembled to create a system to translate place names

from Roman characters to Thai, and to decide how to refer to places
carrying both Khmer and Thai names. According to a letter written
in March 1909 from the French Minister in Siam to the French
Foreign Minister about work of Transcription Committee, the
French had ‘an ultimate aim . . . entertained from the outset.’ They
wished, he said
to persuade the Siamese to embark on a course that is likely to lead them
to the goal we have in view, that is to say, to cause them, at a later stage,
to appeal invariably for our help for the purpose of drawing up a general
map of Siam . . . (cited in Judgment, 145; emphasis by Spender)
Depending on Siamese dependency became, at the World Court in
1962, depending on Siamese acceptance, the legal grounds preclud-
ing or estopping Siam from claiming consent was vitiated by the
errors of Annex I. The advocates for France and Cambodia seemed
to have a gift for making something of nothing. One in particular
seemed to derive great pleasure from handling maps, and communic-
ated the pleasures of map-reading competence to the Court. It may
or may not come as a surprise that his name was Dean Acheson, or
that one of his approaches to a topographical map involved ghost
witnesses.
Stealing Surprise
June 21, 1962, was the Centenary of Prince Damrong and duly cel-
ebrated in Thailand to honor the ‘Father of Thai History.’ On the
same day, the Bangkok Post reported resentment of what it had
earlier dubbed Dean Acheson’s ‘brilliant services’ to Cambodia in
the Temple case (Bangkok Post, 18 June, 1962). Thailand had chosen
its own American lawyer all too well, for he was made a judge of
the World Court and had to withdraw from the case. As the Bangkok
Post explained:
It is regarded here as strange that while America on the one hand made
such a demonstration of solidarity with Thailand as the stationing of troops
here to bolster this country’s defenses against possible Communist aggres-
sion, on the other hand it allowed the use of a presidential adviser by an
adversary of Thailand in a vital case involving strategic land along the
border, sources said.
There has been a feeling in top official circles of doubt concerning American
motives and designs in Southeast Asia as a result of American involvement
in the dispute, the sources added. Officials wondered why, when Thailand
engaged the services of Mr. Philip Jessup, eminent American who is not at
all an official, for the case, he was nominated to the World Court. After his
election, Mr. Jessup had to withdraw from giving an opinion for the judg-
ment because he had once been working on the Thai case. (19 June, 1962)
Public resentment of Acheson’s ‘brilliant services’ caused an Amer-

ican to write in complaint, and the Foreign Affairs Bulletin (FAB) of
Thailand answered the letter saying, ‘To put it more simply, how
would you or the American people feel if someone of similar position
here in Thailand were to act for Mr. Fidel Castro in an international
body and especially a judicial body?’ (FAB Aug.–Sep., 2(1): 57). It
may be said that Acheson’s accomplishment was precisely to make
it impossible for anyone in Thailand to attain a ‘similar position,’ at
least in the eyes of the World Court. For the genius of Acheson’s
strategy was to service the judges brilliantly with various pleasures:
surprise, superiority, and the thrill of hearing ghost witnesses.
Seni Pramoj struck the note of surprise in reaction to the
Acheson’s arguments about Thai inconsistency. When opening the
Thai case on 7 March, he said:
[It was] somewhat of a surprise to see that during the course of these
pleadings, the Government of Cambodia has repeatedly attempted to usurp
Thailand’s position as defending State. Cambodia has tried to evade the
burden of the claimant, by doing so has distorted the relative burdens of
the parties and given a somewhat lopsided view of the case as a whole.
(Pleadings, 213)
He pointed to Cambodia’s confusion about exactly when the Thai

encroached on the Temple. Did they cross the line in 1940, when
Siamese guards were posted? Was it 1949, when French authorities
first noticed the guards there? Was it 1954 when Cambodian
attempt to station troops there was forestalled by despatching Thai
border police? While they naturally agree on the Treaty of 1904,
Cambodia insists this includes Annex I map, although it is only the
source for a sketch attached to a Protocol of 1907. It is Cambodia
that must prove its validity. ‘But it has been contended that Cam-
bodia has discharged this onus of proof by presenting circumstances
giving prima facie evidence reversing the onus of proof. I submit that
Cambodia has done nothing of the kind,’ he declared (Pleadings,
213). On 12 March, Soskice also presented the burden of the claim-
ant in terms of the nature of the terrain. ‘Here nature has erected
a ready made boundary, and it must require a perverse ingenuity to
repudiate nature’s own handiwork in this particular area . . . To cut
866 P. CUASAY
Phra Viharn off from Thailand is almost like cutting a nose off a
face’ (Pleadings, 289).
Speaking on 21 March, Acheson thus had to overcome the
outlandish nature of Cambodia’s claim, and he did it by turning
incredulity against Thailand. ‘The most used word in our oppon-
ent’s vocabulary is ‘‘surprised’’ and in another form ‘‘surprising.’’
They are constantly surprised’ (Pleadings, 446). Acheson under-
mined Counsel for Thailand’s ‘doctrine of incredulity’ (see
Pleadings, 607 and 453) by arguing that ‘Expressions of surprise,
alarm, or indignation are the artifices of advocacy’ (Pleadings,
447). Thailand’s surprise is a pose and pretension, according to
Acheson, who reserved the only genuinely proper surprise in this
case for the absurdity called Thai conduct.
Acheson’s foremost example concerns the Royal Thai Survey
Department. First, Acheson picks up Soskice’s idea that ‘Thailand is
not a corporate entity’ (Judgment, 318). Soskice had applied this
concept to explain how ordinary lay citizens could be unaware of the
exact border while the local officials would be knowledgeable. After
all, said Soskice,
No governments at all can function except through their officials. The acts
of its local officials are as much the acts of government as are acts of the
head of a department. In any event, Thailand’s evidence to which I have
made reference [since page 301] shows that both local and highly placed
officials were involved in the exercise of authority over Phra Viharn.
(Pleadings, 306)
Next, Acheson tries to blur the distinction between local people and
local officials by arguing that Thai Survey Department workers were
as unconcerned with the border as local people. Every time they
needed a map of the scale used by the Annex map, they reprinted
it, undeterred by its geographical inaccuracy and wrong border place-
ment. ‘Sovereignty over Preah Vihear, if the Court please, was to
the Survey Department of the Royal Thai Government a matter of
scale’ (Pleadings, 447). Buoyed upon this play on words, Acheson
manages to turn Soskice’s rhetoric against itself, saying of Thailand
while quoting his opponent, ‘I am respectfully submitting that this
must be the most extraordinary country in the world’ (ibid.). By
reason of the Thai Survey Department’s improper behavior, Acheson
turns against Thailand the very words Soskice had used against Cam-
bodia, and converts Thailand’s feigned surprise into an occasion for
‘genuine’ surprise.
But what had initially caused Soskice to characterize Cambodia
as ‘the most extraordinary country in the world’? The context of the
comment was Soskice’s cross-examination of the Governor of the
Cambodian province adjoining the Temple and hence the province
Cambodia alleged was invaded and occupied by Thai troops stationed
at the Temple. Yet ex-Governor Suon Bonn seemed to know little
about international incidents on a site supposedly under his jurisdic-
tion. Hence it was ‘extraordinary’ that
the provincial Governor is kept in ignorance of a foreign invasion by outside
guards on territory which is immediately under his administrative jurisdic-
tion; is kept in ignorance, in other words, of what is described by the French
as ‘un empietement’—trespass, as I understand that word—on to his own prov-
ince. (Pleadings, 342)
Acheson was therefore substituting for the Cambodian ex-
Governor’s extraordinary unawareness of military invasion, one that
contrasted with the much more impressive Thai evidence docu-
menting sovereign control, the Thai Survey Department’s extraord-
inary unawareness of its own impropriety, one that consisted in the
use by official government mappers of an inaccurate map with a
wrong borderline.
But what an extraordinary substitution Acheson is propounding!
If the provincial Governor was ill-informed about Thai troops cross-
ing his border, perhaps it was because in practice the border left the
temple in Thailand, a possibility Soskice designed his questioning to
draw out and thus augment page after page of documents showing
Thailand’s de facto control of the area. But if functionaries of the
Thai Survey Department are less than exemplary, reprinting on one
occasion, and marking it ‘For a Temporary Purpose,’ an erroneous
map (see Pleadings, 607 and 319, and Rejoinder of Thailand, para.
61), Acheson contends that this frivolous indifference to maps is
tantamount to misplacing the border itself, an impropriety so out-
rageous he can proceed to equate it with a governor’s indifference
to foreign invasion. Substituting for Soskice’s use of ‘extraordinary’
another sense, one based on an implicit standard that official map
departments must never be so outrageously careless about their
national boundary lines, even temporarily, Acheson appropriates his
opponent’s incredulity. In so doing, he makes the difference between
genuine and feigned surprise follow the divisions between a Western
model and an Oriental mime, between a map and its territory, and
between central officials and local authorities. Because the central
868 P. CUASAY
Survey Department’s mimicry of Western models failed when they

relied on a bad map, a fortiori the local authorities, like the local
people whose ignorance the Thai map officials seemed to imitate,
must have failed to secure the territory.
Paradoxically, this merits ‘genuine’ surprise because it is not, to
certain minds, surprising at all. What strains credulity is that Thai-
land could dare to feign surprise at the bareness of the evidence for
French sovereignty. For if ‘her’ central officials cannot treat a map
properly, how could ‘her’ local authorities rule the land? Seni
explained the Thai view, saying maps
have played a very slight part in the political life of Thailand . . . Owing to
the Treaty of 1904 we had lost territories in the lowlands south of the
Dangrek. The territories lost were named in the proclamation of 9
December 1904 . . . This proclamation was sufficient to mark for inhabit-
ants and local authorities of the district concerned where the frontier lay.
No map was needed to find where the frontier was on Mount Phra Viharn.
In fact, if a map had been shown to them, I doubt very much whether the
inhabitants would have been able to read it or whether it would have shown
the frontier to them with any greater clarity. Therefore I can say, without
hesitation and without danger of exaggeration, that the significance given
to maps in the present proceeding is not in proportion with the part they
played in the political life of Thailand either fifty years ago or even today.
. . . The Thai administrative authorities considered the watershed of the
Dangrek as the frontier between Thailand and Cambodia, and that frontier
was never a subject of administrative headaches. There was no situation to
require that the Royal Survey Department checked the results of its survey
with any previous map. (Pleadings, 215)
But then how different these Siamese must be from Colonel Bernard,
President of the French Commission of Delimitation in 1904, of
whom Acheson says, he was ‘much too French and precise for such
sloppiness in expression’ (452, arguing for exactitude of titles on
Commission documents). And what a dangerous attitude this would
be for the region in 1962, pointed out Acheson early on March 1:
It will not have escaped the notice of this Court that the position now taken
by the Government of Thailand would, if sanctioned by the Court, throw
this entire frontier into uncertainty and chaos. If the maps published in
1908 under the authority of the Franco-Siamese Commission of Delimita-
tion are ‘apocryphal’ as regards Preah Vihear, then they are equally apoc-
ryphal as regards the entire frontier between Cambodia and Laos, as delim-
ited under the Treaty of 1904, extending for many hundreds of miles. No
longer will there be in that area a fixed and certain frontier . . . instead . . .
the frontier will consist merely of such topographical features as watersheds
and crests of mountains, with each of the three interested States free to
interpret the precise meaning of those generalities as it wills . . . (Pleadings,
148)
Thus on Thailand’s theory no part of the frontier as delimited is safe or

certain. [But] how very important it is that the frontier in this part of the
world—in this particular part of the world—should be clearly delimited at
this time. This is a time when that frontier is being, and may in the future
continued to be, crossed by people engaged in hostile operations, and it is
certainly of the greatest possible importance that there be a delimitation;
not merely general principles, but a delimitation by an actual line so that
one may know, when incidents occur, in what country they have occurred.
(Pleadings, 149; emphasis in original)
Acheson’s view of the extraordinary carelessness of the Thai map
officials thus relies on a somewhat magical belief that a line well-
drawn, like a map well-tended, has the power to conjure up peace
on the ground from map-given peace of mind, at least those minds
as surprisingly well-ordered as his own.2
If it Pleasure the Court
If there is an erotics of the map, connected with pleasurable feelings

of almost divine mastery that arise in a fantasy of exact visualization,
from an eye-in-the-sky origin, of naked and submissive space yielding
its secrets to the connoisseur, then the services of Dean Acheson may
relate to bodily senses as much as cerebral conceits. For Acheson
repeatedly involves the judges in handling, manipulating, and ogling
the sleek lines and contours of maps. He multiplies and disseminates
maps, makes transparent overlays (ghost maps?) and urges judges to
apply them. He instructs expert witnesses to look for moist streams
in magnifying glasses and encourages judge-voyeurs (see Pleadings,
467–477). He attempts to force the watershed into contorted posi-
tions while seeking out dam slopes, mounds, and the drainage ‘south
and southwest of point F’ (see Pleadings, 431, 466, 471). Intrigued
by such polymorphous services, even Wellington Koo was not abso-
lutely sure where the watershed was, despite hearing extensively
from two sets of experts, including a Thai witness who surveyed the
2
Annex I map seems to have required action for the first time in 1939, when
Luang Wijit Wathakan of the Fine Arts Department examined the map, noticed
the error, and notified the Phibul government to take it up with the French. See
Suriyawut, 1993: 683. This article also reproduces the photograph of Prince Dam-
rong at Phra Viharn on page 680.
870 P. CUASAY
area on the ground and looked under the trees during the rainy
season to see which way streams in fact ran. Here is only one
example, notable for combining appropriation of the opponents’ dra-
matic gesture, use of an overlay, and the forgetting, at the climactic
moment, of a telegraph wire.
It is March 22, and Acheson has just used overlays to prove Thai-
land, in attempting to demonstrate the untenable effects of following
the Annex I frontier line, had merely superimposed the frontier line
on the modern map without any appropriate adjustment. Now he
quotes extensively from a speech by Henri Rolin, an attorney for
Thailand who had claimed two villages mapped onto the Cambodian
side are actually on the Thai side.
[Rolin’s words quoted back by Acheson:] It is true that according to
Map No. 5 (Second Commission) these two villages which are located
on the plateau are placed inside the Cambodian border, actually right
close up against the Cambodian border. [Now from here on I submit
that M. Rolin steps from his role as advocate into the role of witness.
He continues:] However, we have to conclude that this solution which
has been advocated by the Second Commission and by Lieutenant Malan-
dain had, in the light of experience, we suppose, proven to be practically
undefendable because facts, Members of the Court, are stronger than a map.
[And he went on:] It has been impossible, it has been impossible [he says]
for the Army of Cambodia to maintain its sovereignty over this pied a
terre which scrupulously has been reserved for it some tens of metres or
maybe a few kilometres from the watershed. It was considered in practice
[he says] it was considered in practice that it was obviously necessary to
permit Thailand to remain in possession of these villages up to the edge
of the cliff unless insurmountable difficulties were to be encountered.
[And then came the dramatic gesture of M. Rolin, He picked up a map,
this map, and he said:] Here is proof of the statement: a map, Members
of the Court, a Cambodian map. This is a map which shows the district
of Siem Reap (Annex 81a). It is on a scale of 1:200,000 and is dated
July 1939, tempore non suspecto. And here I find a frontier [he continues]
which substantially reverts to that of Sector 5 with this difference . . .:
that Dak Ream and Kouan are both located north of the border with a
path coming from the south crossing the border to lead to Dak Ream
in Thai territory. [And then this bit of evidence:] We have checked this
by telegraph following the discovery of the fact and have found that
the village of Khoun is a village still inhabited and effectively under
Thai administration. (Pleadings, 459; French original 255; Acheson’s
emphasis)
Acheson’s refutation involves the judges in rubbing maps together:

We have prepared and distributed to the Members of the Court copies
of M. Rolin’s apocryphal map—said by him to be Cambodian, but wholly
unidentified, and unidentifiable, from anything on it as such. We have also
prepared, and similarly distributed, an overlay map of Sector 5 as delimited
by the Second Commission (Annex LXXX). If the overlay is placed on M.
Rolin’s map, it will be seen at a glance that the frontier of the two maps is
identical. The frontier has not been changed . . . So the map proves exactly
nothing. Why the names of the towns are written, on M. Rolin’s map, above
the frontier instead of through it, as in the Sector 5 map, I do not know
and shall not speculate, although I could. And, on Mr. Rolin’s map, the
locations of the villages, apart from where their names are written, are not
shown by the usual small black dot or circle.
One statement, however, can be made without contradiction: it is not, I am

sure, because the villages have mounted a magic carpet and moved north-
ward across the unchanged frontier. (Pleadings, 460)
Acheson then (with a dramatic gesture?) produced Cambodian

Annex LXXXIII, a map dated 1953, with both villages south of the
border, in Cambodia, but on top of the cliff. By now it seems every-
one has been so driven to distraction that the telegraph confirming
Khoun under Thai administration was abandoned. The pleasure of
the Court Members sliding the borderlines together, handling the
instruments of map-hood during a momentary release from the leg-
alistic drone, and thus coupling with physical superimposition a sen-
sation of the psychological superiority deriving from one’s map-
reading competence, seems to have affected most of the chamber.
Once it got overlaid on the map’s magic carpet, the line on paper
effaced memory of the telegraph line.
Ghost Witnesses
I gather that Mr. Acheson is pained if opposing Counsel says they are sur-
prised at statements that he makes. In order to spare him anguish, I will
therefore not say that I am surprised at these statements of his; although
politeness certainly requires that I equally should not be understood to say
that I am not surprised. (Pleadings, 620)
With prim English ‘politeness,’ Sir Frank Soskice set out to list the
lengths to which Acheson had gone to undermine Thailand’s expert
witnesses from the International Training Center at Delft, Dr Ver-
stappen, who directed the project and checked the aerial photogeo-
logy work, and Mr Ackermann, who conducted a topographical
investigation on the ground at Khao Phra Viharn. Here are some of
Acheson’s barbs:
872 P. CUASAY
‘Witnesses have now blandly conceded glaring and material errors . . .’

‘Mr. Ackermann went to Preah Vihear and there discovered the invisible
mound . . .’
‘Mr. Ackermann’s revolutionary discoveries’
‘Rather conveniently we are told both the alternative watersheds left the
Temple itself in Thailand’
‘Mr. Ackermann admitted . . . there was a third possible alternative water-
shed . . . never mentioned until I asked Mr. Ackermann about it.’
‘I confess I find it harder and harder to understand how the ITC school at
Delft operates.’
‘Dr. Verstappen, . . . like Lord Nelson, put his blind eye to the magnifying
glass . . .’
‘[I have] a sense of frustration in part derived from the fact that, whatever
I can do to make a new analysis can always be countered by drawing on
material from the inexhaustible secret portfolio . . .’
‘Thailand’s witnesses have reversed the slope of this valley. They have
achieved this miracle although now they testify that neither God nor his
instrument geology could have done it in over 1000 years.’
(see Pleadings, 610–611)
All these expressions, Soskice declared, ‘are very cordially resented
on this side of the Bar’ (Pleadings, 611). But perhaps Acheson’s
strangest maneuver, foreshadowed by the last statement above, was
to call ghost witnesses.
Acheson tried to make a case for a stream, visible on Annex I
only, so he claimed, through a magnifying glass, which flowed into
Cambodia in 1907. He said, ‘There is considerable eye-witness evid-
ence, in addition to Annex I, for the existence of a stream collecting
water from the Temple area and flowing through or over the cliff
near point F, and continuing down the steep slope into the Cambod-
ian plain’ (Pleadings, 467). Who is Acheson’s witness? None other
than our old friend, Henri Parmentier, the French archaeologist who
met Prince Damrong at the Temple in 1930. Parmentier, Acheson
argues, described ‘this’ stream as ‘a rocky ravine, the water from
which flows toward Cambodia, forming a fairly considerable stream,
the O Kbal Pos Nakrac’ (Pleadings, 429 [original 271]; note that
no direction is given). Acheson adds that ‘Evidence exists also that
water from the top of the plateau flowed down the so-called ‘‘broken
staircase’’ onto the Cambodian plain,’ and asserts ‘Parmentier says
on page 310 of his work . . . that he observed a considerable amount
of water flowing down this staircase’ (Pleadings, 468; note that the
key words ‘onto the Cambodian plain’ are not attributed to
Parmentier). For good measure, Acheson throws in another French
archaeologist, Georges Groslier, who says something to the same
effect (ibid.). Finally, Acheson draws into the fold a British archaeolo-
gist, John Black, who says:
‘Local legend has it that this stream [north of the ‘‘broken staircase’’ which
runs east–west] was a former reservoir. Making use of the natural depres-
sion, the builders are said to have converted it into a dam, by controlling
the east outflow, to provide the large water supply needed by thousands of
workmen who must have been engaged on the task of the magnitude of
Phra Vihar. There was, however, no evidence that this natural depression
had been used as such, though the job of creating a reservoir would have
presented no difficulty to the Khmer who were unsurpassed in the art of
water conservancy.’ (quoted in Pleadings, 468)
Now comes Acheson to interpret Black’s statement and conclude
for a stream flowing east into Cambodia:
Following elephant tracks through the thick vegetation in this valley, he
[Black] found a stream which coursed through the valley. Both Parties are
agreed on the existence of such a stream. Indeed, Mr. Ackermann went all
the way to Preah Vihear to find the direction of its flow.
Now comes a most important statement from Mr. Black. The east outflow of
this stream (the east outflow; that is, the outflow into Cambodia) was, he
says, once stopped up, so local legend had it . . . Mr. Black himself saw no
evidence that the valley had been used as a reservoir, but he said that the
job of turning it into one would have presented no difficulty.
In 1955, then, the east outflow of this stream was unblocked. Can one doubt
that it would have presented even less difficulty thereafter than in the year
A.D. 900 to block it, had it been desired to do so? . . .
Between them, these two witnesses account for the presence of such a
stream in 1924 (Parmentier’s first visit), 1929 and 1930 (Parmentier’s
second and third visits) and 1955 (Black’s visit). The same stream is even
shown on one of the many versions of the physical features produced by
Thailand’s experts—their map 75c. (Pleadings, 468; emphasis by Acheson)
Indeed, continues Acheson in the afternoon of 22 March,
To walk along a stream, to observe its course and then report what one has
seen, does not require any expert knowledge at all. Anyone can do this. In
particular, Messrs. Parmentier and Black did do it. So, when Parmentier
and Black say they saw a different and inconsistent stream [from the one
observed by Ackermann], the three of them are speaking on the same level:
that is, they are all three speaking as witnesses. Intrinsically . . . none of
them is entitled to any greater weight than any of the others.
Now we do not assert that Mr. Ackermann did not see what he says he saw.
We hope and believe that the Court will be impatient with assertions, if
874 P. CUASAY
they are made, that Messrs. Parmentier and Black did not see what they
say they saw. (Pleadings, 470)
It may be pointed out that while Ackermann, the expert witness

called by Thailand to testify about his 11-day ground survey on the
site, did walk along the streams in the vicinity, it cannot be assumed
that archaeologists Parmentier, Black, or, for that mater, Groslier,
the ‘witnesses’ called by Cambodia, specifically paid attention to
stream channel flows. Nor should it escape attention that Parmentier
never says the stream flows eastward, and Black only attests that a
local legend speaks of a dam. It is far from clear that the quotes
can be sutured together to conclude, as Acheson does, that the ‘east
outflow’ necessarily runs ‘onto the Cambodian Plain.’ It cannot be
shown that the word ‘east’ was used because Black actually noted
the stream flowed east, or because it was the wording used by his
informants in relating a legend which, for all anyone knows, may
refer to another stream or dam, or might mix up east and west, or
possibly was mis-heard by Black, who then mixed up the Thai words
tawan auk [east] and tawan tauk [west]. It should be noted, too, that
Henri Parmentier visited the Temple in May and June of 1924,
March 1929, and January and February 1930, while John Black was
there in late spring and in November 1955 (see Pleadings, 617). In
these dry periods of the year, none of these ghost witnesses could
readily have checked the direction of streams that flow in the rainy
season, even if they had set out to do that.
Furthermore, it cannot be proven that map 75c represents both
Parmentier’s considerable ‘O Kbal Pos Nakrac’ and Black’s stream
as flowing into Cambodia, especially when it is recalled that Acheson
himself complained against map 75c as one of those maps drawn up
before Ackermann’s ground survey which Thailand nonetheless filed
without first updating.
What puzzles me [Acheson] most is the mental process which would permit
the filing with this Court of Map Sheet 2 of Annex 49 . . . [because] Appar-
ently Mr. Ackermann’s revolutionary discoveries had created quite a sensa-
tion in the International Training Center of Delft. Apparently the Thai
Government knew that the April map had been thought insufficient to
determine the watershed, and they had approved Mr. Ackermann’s visit to
Preah Vihear. But either Mr. Ackermann’s revolutionary discoveries were
not reported to the Thai authorities, or they, too, saw no reason for cor-
recting the glaring errors on Map Sheet 2 and joined in filing it with this
Court. Even the photogeological sketch made in April—Thai Annex 75c—
was shown to be in error by Mr. Ackermann’s trip, so it is said. Nevertheless,
it was filed with the Court without any explanation. . . .
When I called Dr. Verstappen’s attention to this stream shown by his own
Department of the I.T.C., he, like Lord Nelson, put his blind eye to the
magnifying glass and declared that he could not see the stream at all, but
saw two quite different streams. I submit that any Member of the Court
who wishes to look at this spot through a magnifying glass—as one Member
has already done—will see this stream drawn right through the alleged
watershed and flowing into Cambodia. (Pleadings, 466)
One may detect in Acheson’s puzzlement the same impatience earl-
ier shown for the alleged inconsistency and negligence of the Thai
Survey Department when they used maps that contained borderline
errors. One may also wonder what mental process would permit
Acheson to complain about map 75c, consult it with a magnifying
glass, and then use it to corroborate the stories of ghosts whose ‘eye-
witness evidence’ he never brought up with Ackermann when he had
the chance to cross-examine the witness.
The answer lies south and southwest of point F:
I urge that the Members of the Court study very closely the area to the
south and southwest of point F. When Mr. Ackermann’s stream is trans-
posed from Thai Annex 75b on to [abovementioned] Map Sheet 2, Annex
49, it will be seen that this stream crosses first the 550 metre and then the
540 metre contour lines a very short distance west of the cliff edge, just at
the point where the cliff edge is dissolving into a more gentle slope. . . . I
think it will be apparent to the Members of the Court that in this area it
is a question, even today, not of metres, but of centimetres, whether that
stream will veer off to the east and thence into Cambodia, or whether it
will turn to the northwest as Mr. Ackermann says it does . . .
Let me repeat for the sake of clarity that I am not challenging Mr. Acker-
mann’s statement that the stream, in fact, does not now do this. (Pleadings,
471)
The Members of the Court neither sent independent experts to the
Temple, nor needed to, since their decision rendered the actual
watershed moot. Few expressed an opinion: Fitzmaurice thought the
watershed ran as contended by Thailand, but voted with the major-
ity; Koo though the Court should have sent experts. Somehow the
incontrovertible nature of the terrain, which Soskice thought only a
‘perverse ingenuity’ could repudiate, seems to have vanished into a
quibble over ‘centimetres’ of ‘gentle slope,’ as if the cliff face itself
had become as insubstantial as the ghosts conjured to reverse the
water flow upon it. Somehow Colonel Bernard’s desire for a natural
and visible frontier line, like a watershed borne by a cliff, had come
to appear naive and difficult, as if invisible witnesses could transpose
in the span of decades what Acheson could transpose by the magical
876 P. CUASAY
rubbing of maps. Helped by Acheson’s brilliant services, the Temple

was transposed.
The truth is that something is happening here of which we have heard
before. The slope of the valley is being reversed; but it is not our witnesses
who are doing it, it is Mr. Acheson. When he suggests to the Court that M.
Parmentier and Mr. Black saw a stream flowing eastward through this
valley, he is solemnly suggesting that the whole inclination of the valley was
exactly reversed between 1955 and 1961 when—and Mr. Acheson does not
challenge this—Mr. Ackermann saw the stream flowing from east to west.
I do not think I go too far in submitting that this suggestion can only be
described as one which borders on the fantastic. (Sir Frank Soskice in
Pleadings, 621)
Anticipatory Violence
What has been said thus far may be easily summarized: mimesis is
the threat in the gift. When Prince Damrong gave a gift of souvenir
photographs, they threatened to represent the trumpery of colonial-
ism, and the gift had to be misrecognized as a counter-presentation
acquiescing to, or failing to protest, French sovereignty. When both
Parties represented themselves as sovereign States, the evidence
threatened to reduce that sovereignty to a matter of Minutes, visits,
and mostly doing nothing, whereupon the gift of Colonel Bernard’s
general map series of frontier areas was misrecognized as solemn
acceptance of an implied agreement, established, so the World Court
judged, by Thailand doing nothing. And when Dean Acheson serviced
the judges with the gifts of surprise, superiority, and thrilling ghost
witnesses, he showed how pleasurable to its masters and how
threatening for its adversaries the technology of mimesis, consisting
in this case of maps, could be. The question now becomes, What
makes mimesis threatening? It seems widely assumed that a repres-
entation may be more or less fitting for a particular reality, and
that when mimesis is behaving properly the fit is good but when the
representation errs it does violence to the reality. I suggest that we
reject this false choice between bad, threatening mimesis and good,
proper mimesis, as also we should reject a false choice between Thai-
land or Cambodia. This sovereign pretense of having a choice, this
presumption that to apply judgment is to end violence, is a profound
disavowal of the historic process by which differences are constructed
so as to be apparent, acceptable, relevant, or estimable. To sacrifice
that past may be the very action that destines mimesis for violence.
For the rest of our journey, then, I want to explore the absence
opened up by the World Court’s disavowal of its violent pedigree,
the founding violence of modern nation-states. Shut out and denied,
this violence fled in two directions: into the future, and into the
landscape.
In its Preah Vihear decision, ICJ upheld the stability of contracts,
the finality of frontiers, the propriety of judicial settlement, all in the
name of promoting peace and ending the violence of international
altercations. On March 27, 1962, Seni Pramoj questioned whether
this violence was not merely an effect of Cambodian representations.
Mr. President, Members of the Court, during the course of this case, Cam-
bodia has more than once charged Thailand with having committed acts of
violence against Cambodia. Much emphasis has been placed in the Cam-
bodian pleadings on such words as ‘violence’, ‘armed violence’ and ‘force’.
It has been Cambodia’s intention to make Thailand appear in the eyes of
this Court and hence in the eyes of the whole world, as an aggressive bully,
a cruel and destructive menace to the peace and security of small, distressed
Cambodia. It has been Cambodia’s intention to sway this Court with sym-
pathy for its cause, the cause of the helpless against the powerful. Cam-
bodia has come before this Court wearing a mantle of injured innocence, a
small boy seeking the warm protection of the society of nations. Mr. Truong
Cang has told the Court of Cambodia being opposed from the outset by
violence, armed violence. He hoped that the court would settle an unhappy
frontier incident, that there would not be created other incidents that
might be more distressing and doubtless ‘more destructive’ for that little coun-
try, Cambodia.
I ask the Court to pause a moment and consider: When did all this violence
occur? How many gallons of blood have been spilt over Phra Viharn? When
were Cambodian guards forcefully pushed over the precipice by a Thai
hand? Does there appear in any of the documents submitted by either party
evidence that a Thai even shook a wrathful fist at a Cambodian?
I ask the Court to consider facts, not the blown-up oratory of Cambodia.
What are these facts? [He reviewed the events leading up to the proceed-
ings and concluded:] All this was done without a shot being fired. What
then is the violence alleged by Cambodia? (Pleadings, 563–564)
As Seni’s description alleging Cambodian guile implies, it was almost

entirely a violence within representation, formed in the press and
radio of both nations. This war of words can be followed, blow for blow,
in publications of that era, and a perverse dynamic emerges from the
878 P. CUASAY
3
exchange. The two countries, ally and neutral, appear locked in a
vicious circle of mimetic desire (see Girard, 1977) for a negative differ-
ence. In the bipolar climate, both claimed a non-aggressive posture
while aggressively pursuing modern national identity.
McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser to US President Ken-
nedy, formulated the basis for this perverse dynamic between ally
and neutral in 1962.
In one way or another all of our military alliances take their present mean-
ing mainly from the threat of Communist expansionism . . . Yet because we
are numerous and varied, and because we live at different distances from
the various centers of Communist aggressive initiative, we do not all see the
Communist threat alike . . . It is therefore fortunate that among the US allied
opinions, ours is near the center. (Bundy, 1962: 19; emphasis mine)
An ally like the front-line state of Thailand thus had to worry
whether the friendship of America was genuine, or merely a façade
for cold calculations of security. Acheson’s services for Cambodia, as
we have seen, was hardly reassuring. In contrast, Bundy seemed to
find befriending the neutral easier.
Fortunately, most of our neutral friends are friends indeed. We will continue
our respect for their neutrality, in our concern for their development, in
our belief that their independent progress is deeply in the common interest
of humanity. Because we ourselves are a new people, a recent historical
addition to the written record of mankind, we can and do feel with a shock
of recognition the pride and purpose of the new countries. (Bundy, 1962: 18;
my emphasis)
Now Prince Sihanouk’s type of neutrality was certainly shocking to
Thailand. On June 9, 1962, near the eve of the World Court’s
decision, Prince Sihanouk, speaking in response to newspapermen,
six times ‘launched into false and frenzied attacks against Thailand.
He also referred to the Prime Minister of Thailand in terms which
are not usual among civilized people. Such vile attacks and allega-
tions denote such vulgarity and incoherence, they sound more like
utterances coming from an inmate of a psychopathic ward.’ (FAB
Aug.–Sep., 2(1): 31, 1962). What did America do? It delivered 12
3
For Cambodian views see Petite anthologie de la presse thaie, 1960; Livre blanc sur la
rupture des relations diplomatiques entre le Cambodge et la Thailande, le 23 octobre 1961, n.d.
(1962?). For Thai views see Facts about the Relations between Thailand and Cambodia,
1961; Foreign Affairs Bulletin (FAB), 1961ff. A contemporary overview is found in
Far Eastern Economic Review of 23 Nov., 1961 as well as Singh, 1962. Useful secondary
literature of the period includes Leifer, 1963; Nuechterlein, 1965; Smith, 1965;
Wilson, 1963.
T-28 aircraft to the Cambodian Air Force in addition to previously
given H-19 helicopters and anti-aircraft guns, and was considering
donating additional H-34 troop-carrying helicopters and M-113
amphibious armoured personnel carriers (FAB Aug.–Sep., 2(1): 37,
1962; Nuechterlein, 1965: 254). And Sihanouk’s response? Said the
Chairman of the Cambodian delegation to the United Nations 17th
General Assembly: ‘The Prince did not fail to give notice, without
any possible ambiguity, to the Western Powers that he would not
hesitate, if he did not obtain satisfaction as to substance, to ensure
the security of Cambodia by appealing to the Chinese People’s
Republic and the Soviet Union for troops to protect that security’
(quoted in FAB Oct.–Nov., 2(2): 176, 1962). Such paradoxes
‘seemed to prove that Cambodia could get aid from all sides in the
Cold War without having to make the adjustments that committed
nations such as Thailand had to make in terms of less flexibility in
foreign policy’ (Nuechterlein, 1965: 251).
To speak schematically, Cambodian independence and neutrality
was based on a strategy of playing the superpowers off against one
another. The most convenient way to lash out at the United States
was to bait its ally, Thailand, by edging closer to the Communist
bloc. To keep Cambodia as far from Communism as possible, Amer-
ica would overlook Thailand’s distress and engage in friendly persua-
sions that Thailand undoubtedly noted, ‘with a shock of recognition,’
as disturbingly similar to gifts received as an ally. Thailand, out of
a logic alloyed with envy, would thus attempt to increase its own
independence in foreign policy and ‘began to consider a shift to a
neutral policy and rapprochement with the Communist bloc’ (Smith,
1965: 186). Or more exactly, a policy ‘not-pro-West . . . not pro-
Communist . . . also not-neutralist,’ and hence quintessentially ‘Thai-
ist’ or ‘based on Thai history, Thai culture, Thai interests’ (quoted in
Wilson, 1963: 87). However, this need to be Thai through negative
difference would, at the very least, confuse and collapse the differ-
ence, so assiduously cultivated by Prince Sihanouk, between valiant
Cambodian neutrality and Thailand’s (materially enviable) slavery
to her American master.
Prince Sihanouk, poisonous invective aside, was quite lucid about
the need to prevent Thai neutrality:
On the one hand [America] furnishes our adversaries with all the means
necessary to menace our existence, while on the other hand it constitutes,
voluntarily or not, by its presence within the borders of our adversaries, a
sufficient guarantee for our survival.
880 P. CUASAY
When Thailand becomes neutral, we will no longer be able to count on

communist assistance. . . . When one must choose between neutrals, one
chooses the most important and the most ‘compliant.’ When that day
comes, it will no longer be possible for us to call on the west for aid, for the
voluntary disengagement of Thailand will mean that the Free World no
longer weighs heavily in the balance of Southeast Asia’s destiny. (Quoted
in Smith, 1965: 187–8)
And so to keep a strongly aligned Thailand in the game, Sihanouk

would return repeatedly to the attack, and make comments such as
‘The Thais, or our elder brothers who at one time used to be our
younger brothers . . . can change their skin. They have a variety of
masks. They can put on a monkey mask or a demon mask or any-
thing. They may survive’ (quoted in FAB 1(2): 37, 1961). Such was
the symmetry of the situation, however, that the charge could be,
and was, levelled by Thai radio and press at Prince Sihanouk himself.
Widespread was a riddle based on a pun. Q: ‘Thai people do not like
what color [si arai]?’ A: ‘They do not like Sihanouk’ (Charles Keys,
personal communication).
In what must have seemed like supercilious dismissal that only
rankled more, Thailand, at least officially, was restrained. The Minis-
try of Foreign Affairs complained uncannily of the disadvantage of
silence, saying that ‘In spite of the fact that the Thai Government
had not seen fit to reply in kind to the Cambodian campaign of
vilification and preferred to observe the greatest restraint, Cambod-
ian leaders mistook the silence on the Thai side as a sign of weakness
and even as an acknowledgement of all the falsehoods propagated
by Cambodia’ (FAB Oct.–Nov., 1(2): 63, 1961). But on October 20,
1961, the Thai Prime Minister, Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat,
cracked. He said Prince Sihanouk’s words at a Tokyo press
conference,
clearly showed that there was a plan which may serve as a bridge to induce
[chakjungao] Communists to harm [tham ray] neighbors, which was a treach-
ery [kanthorayot] to the nations of Southeast Asia. . . . The government
should pay careful attention to dangers coming from this region and, at the
same time, we can ignore his arrogance by reflecting, by way of consolation,
on the old tale of a pig who provoked a lion into combat. (Smith, 1965:
147–8; Thai in FAB Oct.–Nov., 1(2): 25, 1961)
Prince Sihanouk was furious. He went before the Cambodian

National Assembly on 23 October 1961 and obtained their vote to
break diplomatic relations. The difference between Thailand and
Cambodia was now as stark as it could be.
But it was a difference articulated in the monstrous doubling of
ally and neutral, as the longing to trade places and the logic of con-
structing nationhood from negative difference fed off each other. It
thus proposed to the World Court an inherently false choice. The
dynamic of ally and neutral at least allowed some flexibility of tempo,
but whichever side the Court took, it could only raise the stakes
decisively and force violence beyond a state of alert and into a state
of emergency. Yet the World Court, set up precisely to judge disputes
between nation states, was necessarily blinded to this false choice.
Indeed, through its rhetoric of self-consistent nations with a duty to
protest, it seemed to incite violent inscription of unmistakeable
national differences in the name, ironically enough, of international
law.
After considering ‘a Portia-like (Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice)
attitude’ of ‘Take the Temple, remove it, but not a single grain of
Thai earth must be taken away,’ (Bangkok Post, 22 June 1962) the
Thai Government decided to comply with the ICJ decision ‘under
protest and with reservation of her intrinsic rights,’ that is, ‘whatever
rights Thailand has, or may have in the future, to recover the Temple
of Phra Viharn by having recourse to any existing or subsequently
applicable legal process’.4 The Thai flag was never lowered at Phra
Viharn, but the ‘flag and flagpole were removed from the temple in
a standing position and placed in a museum.’ In the Thai press,
Prince Sihanouk and his followers were reviled as ‘the inheritors of
evil French tradition’ (Singh, 1962: 26). On the very day that the
Portia stand was discussed in the Bangkok Post, Reuter of Radio
Phnom Penh reported that ‘The soul of a late Princess, member of
the Cambodian Royal Family, reincarnated in the body of a sorcerer,
predicted that Thailand would cause Cambodia more trouble in
three or four months’ (cited in FAB 2(2) Oct.–Nov. 1962: 177). The
ghost seems to have understood in her own way that the disavowed
violence constituting the national state would come haunting from
the future. In 1966 there were 300 frontier incidents and 320 dead
or wounded. April of 1966 saw battle at Preah Vihear itself. In July
1970, with the Lon Nol regime in power in Cambodia, Thai planes
retraced the aerial photography flightpaths used to map the frontier
and bombed Communist targets in the Temple area (Jha, 1979: 117,
121). And, recalling the World Court judgment that ‘Thailand did
4
July 3 Communique, Information Office of the Prime Minister; July 6 letter by
Minister of Foreign Affairs to UN Acting Secretary General.
882 P. CUASAY
nothing,’ an event took place at Preah Vihear in June 1979, almost

17 years to the day after the ICJ decision.
Loaded with Cambodian refugees from temporary camp sites all over east-
ern Thailand, hundreds of buses converged on a mountainous region of the
northeastern border near the temple of Preah Vihear, whose ownership had
long been a source of bitter dispute between Thailand and Cambodia. They
arrived, with military precision, after dark.
The border had been sealed off by Thai soldiers; the area was flooded with
troops. The refugees were ordered, busload by busload, to walk back into
Cambodia. They were told there was a path down the mountains but that
on either side of it there were mine fields. They were also told that on the
other side the Vietnamese army was waiting to welcome them. Thai soldiers
said, ‘Thai money will not be valid in Kampuchea; we ask you to make a
voluntary contribution to our army.’
The path down the mountains became steeper, the jungle thicker. Dozens,
scores of people fell onto mines. Those with possessions had to abandon
them to carry their children down. . . . For days this operation went on.
Altogether, between 43,000 and 45,000 people were pushed down the cliffs
at Preah Vihear. It took three days to cross the mine field . . .
One refugee who finally managed to escape back to Thailand told UNHCR
officials: ‘The crowd was very dense. It was impossible to number the victims
of the land mines. The wounded people were moaning. Tears I thought had
dried up long ago came back to my eyes—less because of the sight than
from the thought that those innocent people had paid with their lives for
their attempts to reach freedom in a world that was too selfish.’
. . . Throughout the rest of June and early July the refugees remained in
the no man’s land of Preah Vihear . . .
What did the UN high Commissioner for Refugees do on their behalf: From
Geneva there was silence. From Bangkok, inaction. (Shawcross, 1984: 89–
91)
A Haunted Landscape
The World Court repressed the constitutive founding violence of the

nation state in another way by ignoring the regional history and
experiences of local people. This seemed only natural, since only
States had standing, and indeed the disavowed violence of state con-
solidation escaped into the natural surroundings. Long before the
Khmer Rouge’s Year One, the familiar world of the inhabitants of
the Forest Khmer Domains where Preah Vihear stood was eroding.
In the opening years of the century which ICJ scrutinized so closely
for signs of sovereignty and administration, a history of state violence
and millennial rebellion remained invisible in the eyes of judges and
lawyers. In their eyes, nonetheless, there was something ‘forbidding’
about the landscape.
The region to the immediate north of the escarpment dominating the Cam-
bodian plains was forbidding and remained so. A few people apparently from
time to time eked out an existence there. The whole district along the escarp-
ment on the Dangrek was covered with sparse forests and stunted trees and
was, in Colonel Bernard’s view, ‘despairingly monotonous.’ After the summer
rains it swarmed with game. In the dry season ‘there could not be,’ he says,
‘a more desolate landscape.’ The rivers were dry and ‘water was only to be
found in loathsome pools where all the wild animals come to drink.’ (Sir
Percy Spender, Judgment, 138; emphasis mine)
Sir Frank Soskice also commented that whenever Counsel for Cam-
bodia approached the evidence for sovereign control, ‘they give their
own description in general terms of the nature of the disputed terri-
tory. From this they draw the inference that no governmental activity
would be expected there, except activity of one particular kind
[French archaeology] of which they happen to have evidence . . . This
is what Professor Reuter was doing when he dwelt upon the lack of
water at Phra Viharn, the absence of a regular population, the diffi-
culties of access, and so on’ (Pleadings, 637). But as undaunted as
a colonial explorer, Professor Reuter nevertheless proceeded to
populate this desolate place with his own image of elephant hunting
while contesting a piece of Thai evidence concerning a provincial
permit for catching wild elephants.
After a short disquisition upon the usual methods employed for catching
elephants, he expressed the opinion that these methods could only be used
on level ground. Having had the privilege of hearing Professor Reuter’s
argument in this case, I should never be surprised to be told that he was
an authority on some hitherto unsuspected subject; so it may be that he is
an expert on the hunting of elephants in the forests of Thailand. (Sir Frank
Soskice, Pleadings, 640)
So much for the Parisian elephant hunter. But the disputed region
is in fact the land of peoples including the Kui [gooy], some of whom
are elephant hunters.
Erik Seidenfaden, who was Deputy Inspector General of the Pro-
vincial Gendarmerie from 1908 to 1919, patrolled the area of north-
eastern Siam where the Temple of Preah Vihear stands. He wrote
884 P. CUASAY
a paper entitled ‘The Kui of Cambodia and Siam’ in 1952, which

pointed out that ‘In spite of many hundreds of years of oppression
by the Khmers, the Kui have preserved their own language and cus-
toms. They must have occupied vast territories formerly, and it was
almost certainly from them that the Khmers wrested the land lying
to the west of the Mekhong and northeast of the great inland lake
(Thale Sap) (Seidenfaden, 1952: 147). The Khmers called these
groups ‘Kui’ but the Thai and Lao called them ‘Suai,’ meaning trib-
ute. As this tribute often included elephants, the prowess of their
elephant hunters was renowned, and ‘the Kui of Surin are still
accounted among the best elephant hunters of Siam’ (Seidenfaden,
1952: 146). Seidenfaden also mentioned that ‘Phra Vihar, which,
like an eagle’s nest, crowns a spur of the Dong Rek hills, was most
probably built by Kui corvee labor’ (Seidenfaden, 1952: 146). Indeed,
the Kui Damrei (damrei is Khmer for elephant) ‘live nearest to the
Dangrek range’ (Seidenfaden, 1952: 154). Most significant for this
exploration of landscape, when Seidenfaden came to speak of the
Siamese province of Srisaket, which adjoins the Temple of Preah
Vihear, he mentioned the villages ‘from which came the leader of
the fanatical Phu-mi-bun uprising in 1903’ and added, ‘A much
smaller and less dangerous movement broke out in amphoe Kantra-
raks [site of the Temple] in 1916, the leader of this movement also
declaring himself to be the possessor of supernatural powers. Such
ideas are very characteristic of the—in a spiritual sense—somewhat
unbalanced Kha or Moi population of the wild back lands of Cam-
bodia, Annam, and Laos’ (Seidenfaden, 1952: 167).
Major Seidenfaden was referring to the millenarian uprisings that
swept throughout the region, most notably the Holy Men’s Rebellion
of 1901–1902. These movements transcended the recently imposed
and volatile borders of Siam and Indochina, just as Kui people were
scattered on both sides of every border. As a recent Thai-language
study of the Kui people put it, the Kui ‘are the same tribal group
[klumchatphan] as the groups of Kha or Lawa, but neighboring peoples
call them different names . . . for example, the Thai in Laos call
them Kha, the Thai in northern Thailand call them Lawa, the
Khmer in Cambodia call them Kui or Koy, and the Thai of Thailand
call them Suai’ (Cheun, 1990: 26). It was these Austroasiatic tribal
groups of Kha and Kui throughout northeast Siam, Laos and Cam-
bodia that were involved in movements known to Thai historiography
as the Holy Men’s Rebellion [khabot phumibun]. At the time, the Thai
central government in Bangkok was striving to consolidate its control
of the provinces under the threat of French colonial ambitions to
expand the territory of Indochina. In 1897, a complete overhaul of
the bureaucratic organization of Siam, the Thesaphiban reforms, was
enacted. In the northeastern region where the Kui lived, fear of
French aggression combined with opposition to the newly imposed,
centralized national order to fuel millenarian aspirations for a new
world where the people could be free of both Siam and France.
The end of the world as they knew it was set for March 23, 1902,
according to the millennial vision of phumibun [men with merit] and
phuwiset [miracle men]. Many of these leaders were monks or former
monks. Their message, spread by molam [singing troubadours],
prophesied a wind-storm, and darkness for seven days and seven
nights,
gold and silver would become pebbles, pebbles would become gold and
silver; pigs and buffaloes would become man-eating yaksa [giant demons];
and Thao Thammikarat [Lord Righteous Ruler], the meritful person would
appear in this world. (Damrong Rajanubhab, cited in Paitoon, 1984: 139)
People were therefore instructed to collect gravel ‘so that the Thao
Thammikarat can transform them into gold and silver,’ and ‘if one is
afraid of death, one should kill albino buffalo and pigs before the
middle of the sixth month to prevent them from being transformed
into yaksa’ (cited in Murdoch, 1974: 59). The reaction to the holy
men was intense. Phra Yannarakkit, the highest ranking monk of
the region, and Director of Education, noted in February of 1902
that from Ubon Ratchatani to Sangkha, no one could speak of any-
thing but the phumibun, and ‘rice in the fields remained unharvested
and cattle and buffaloes were allowed to eat it’ (cited in Keyes, 1977:
297).
On the Indochinese side, it was French colonialism rather than
Siamese centralization that threatened to eliminate local elites and
customary practices. And if hostility between Indochina and Siam
threatened to disrupt the Kui proclivity for crossing borders on ele-
phant hunts, the French colonial government was even more hostile
to another border-breaking business among some of its tribal groups:
the slave trade. On May 29, 1901, the Sedang of the Kontum Plateau
involved in the Annamite (Vietnamese) slave trade killed the mili-
tary officer sent there to stop it. The Frenchman, named Robert, was
speared 20 times (Murdoch, 1974: 56). Another Frenchman named
Menard was killed by Kha between Saravane and Bassac, apparently
for his interference with the Bolovens Plateau slave trade of the
Loven tribes in Laos, and Saigon’s L’Opinion reported that ‘his head,
886 P. CUASAY
hands and feet were cut off and displayed in a bird cage’ (Murdoch,
1974: 550). Perhaps violence erupting over the slave trade spilled
over into the tense relations between the French authorities and
marginalized tribes, igniting a fuse soaked with millennial proph-
ecies. In any case, it seems millennial movements first flared into
violence in French Laos. Ong Keo, who led the uprising there, was
from the Kha group Alak. Ong Keo and Loven chiefs Komadam and
Komaseng started appearing on white cotton panels as meritorious
figures. By June of 1901, many people from Laos were involved,
including the Uppahat (the second highest ruling official) of Attapeu,
the area from which many of the Kui had migrated in the 17th
century to live areas now under Siamese control. Joining this group
was Ong Wan or Ong Man, who became a leader on the Thai side.
On March 28, 1902, Ong Man led his followers to rob and burn the
Siamese town of Khemmarat where they executed two officials and
took the governor prisoner (Murdoch, 1974: 57). Before the rebel-
lions could become an excuse for French invasion, the Siamese gov-
ernment responded forcefully. The regional Commissioner Sanphas-
itthaprasong called for 400 soldiers from Nakhon Ratchasima: 200
by way of Surin, who divided into 100 to Sisaket and 100 to Ubon,
and 200 by way of Suwannaphum, who divided into 100 to Roi Et and
100 to Yasothon. On April 12, 1902, the soldiers at Ubon formed an
ambush at Baan Sapheu in which 300 were killed and 400 were
captured (Murdoch, 1974: 59). There were many other outbreaks.
Ultimately 3 leaders were arrested in Surin and 4 in Sisaket; a petty
official in Sangkha and another rebel leader in Sikoraphum were also
captured with about 400 other rebels. All leaders were put to death,
except for three who were ordered to remain in the monkhood for
life. All the followers were ordered to perform the ceremony of
drinking the holy water of allegiance and then released
(Paitoon,1984: 145–6). The violence on the Indochinese side lasted
longer. Ong Keo’s old ally Khomadam continued with armed resist-
ance, and was finally killed in an attack in January of 1936. His son
Si Thon, however, was in 1974 the Vice Chair of the Pathet Lao for
the Southern Hill People, causing no end of consternation in the
crises of Laos that haunted Southeast Asian governments at the time
of the case concerning the Temple of Preah Vihear (Murdoch, 1974:
60–1).
Thus despite the appearance of prompt suppression, both colonial
French in Indochina and internally colonializing Thai in Siam, when
looking at Kui peoples, sensed weird beliefs and savage passions just
beneath the surface. Thai historian Tej Bunnag concluded that
Although the government was able to suppress the Holy Men’s Rebellion
quickly, the story of phumibun could not be seen to conclude as promptly.
Prince Sanphasitthiprasong himself ordered that ‘About these rebel groups,
understand that they still have smart people . . . who do not show their face
[mai auk na] and go about freely [thieo] because many more groups proceed
quietly [pai ngiap-ngiap].’ Which means that a military victory [chaichana
thang thahan] is not truly a definite victory [mi chai chaichana yang dedkhat].
(Tej, 1967: 28, original in Thai)
In the Cold War period, it seemed natural to recollect these memor-
ies in conjuring up the need for counter-insurgency and frontier-
control in this landscape of hidden threats. In addition, Seidenfaden
found the Cahiers of l’Ecole Française d’Extrème Orient to be replete with
references conflating the beliefs of marginalized tribesmen with viol-
ent tendencies.
The Katu is an animist with violent passions who believes firmly in sorcery.
The outcome of such passions and superstitions is murder and cruelty. In 1937
a revolt broke out due to superstition. This time it was about some miraculous
water obtained from a python god. It made people invulnerable and pro-
tected the world against the cataclysm of the three flaming suns, etc. This
reminds me of the Phu mi bun movement in northeast Thailand in 1902
where like superstitions were indulged in. The Kha or Moi killed all white
animals and left everything in order to obtain this miraculous water.
(Seidenfaden, 1941: 45; emphasis mine)
The violence throughout the region from 1902 to 1937 was thus
seen as a continuous stream of superstitious brutality. ‘This time’
miraculous water was the cause, just as earlier ‘like superstitions
were indulged in.’ But since these superstitions mark the traces
of state-sanctioned violence under erasure, the possibility remains
that Katu, Kha, Moi, or Kui were precipitated into aggression by
the disavowed violence of the colonial state. This masking of the
violence of rule as bloody custom has been identified by Michael
Taussig as a general property of colonialism, ‘the mimicry by the
colonizer of the savagery imputed to the savage’ is dubbed ‘the
colonial mirror of production’ (Taussig, 1993: 66). Amidst a his-
tory of gunsmoke and colonial mirrors, the dominated landscape
emerged haunted, bearing a watershed that would run with
blood.
Picturesque Ruins and Uneasy Ghosts
In this journey among the ghosts that haunted the case of Preah
Vihear at the World Court, we have examined at exhausting
888 P. CUASAY
length the threat in mimesis and the violence of the nation state.
We have seen the ghostly ways difference is recuperated within
international law to reinscribe colonial-type relations of power. We
have seen how systematically disavowed violence, whether arising
from the monstrous symmetry of the dynamic between ally and
neutral, or evident in the founding traumas of modern statehood,
returns to haunt from the future or escapes to bathe the landscape
in a mist of wildness and desolation. As if on pilgrimage to Mount
Preah Vihear, we have reached the top of the broken staircase.
But can we find an alternative solution? Perhaps, as a pragmatic
matter, since Thailand and Cambodia have brought only blood
and bitterness to this place, it might be desirable to preserve it
from both. It could be given back to nature and the indigenous
peoples, to be managed cooperatively between the two govern-
ments in equal partnership with local communities, as a trans-
border Protected Landscape, Anthropological Reserve—Natural
Biotic Area and/or Multiple Use—Managed Resource Area (IUCN
categories V, VII and VIII). But the deeper issue about facing up
to and living wisely with the violence of law, the state, and repres-
entation is not a question with a clear, painless, or stable answer.
At the very least, having climbed the broken staircase, it requires
a refusal to view the Temple of Preah Vihear as a picturesque
ruin, a spectacle for tourists showcased as a world heritage site
and exhibited as a poignant testimony to the grandeur of an
ancient civilization. Such celebration of ruins would draw its power
from ideas of the Picturesque developed in Europe during the age
of colonialism and deployed in the heritage tourism of today. As
a perceptive critic of the politics of the Picturesque has written,
‘The fear of and containment of violence is paramount in the
Picturesque and is best expressed in the period’s obsession with
ruins. The ruin is an object which has sustained violence, be it
the violence of man or simply the violence of time, but this
violence is mitigated by being placed in a distant and unrecover-
able past’ (Modiano, 1994: n18). We must insist instead that the
violence on the border is relatively recent, a poignant testimony
to the grandeur of our modern civilization, and that unless the
everyday lives of local people are not recovered as a picturesque
ruin by the workings of a culturally complacent heritage conserva-
tion, the ghosts of the temple will persist to haunt restlessly the
forgetfulness of present times.
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Modern Asian Studies 32, 4 (1998), pp. 849–890.

 1998 Cambridge University Press

Borders on the Fantastic: Mimesis, Violence,

On 15 June 1962, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) pro-

ism, were ignored. The response to the judgment in Thailand was

. . . Looking at the incident as a whole, it appears to have amounted to a

In a dissenting opinion, Wellington Koo of Nationalist China made

According to a statement of his daughter who accompanied him on the

. . . Even if this presumption [that the French presence asserted a sovereign

Koo’s interpretation was, however, a minority view. Why did ICJ

To recognize the gift of souvenir photographs, as such, would thus

A Gift for Nothing

The French Resident and Henri Parmentier received gifts of photo-

of Foreign Affairs to send to Paris—which might have read something like

[Spender] am satisfied was expected’ (ibid.). In these circumstances,

Both sides left a matter of sovereignty in obscurity, or what is equally

Spender developed at length the argument that although nothing in

One may sympathize with Siam’s lack of topographical and cartographical

duty’s importance for contractual relations when he sided with the

Such a necessity requires a sovereign state to be on the alert against

This slip is spooky or uncanny because it is the failure to insert a

had to be assembled to create a system to translate place names

Public resentment of Acheson’s ‘brilliant services’ caused an Amer-

He pointed to Cambodia’s confusion about exactly when the Thai

Survey Department’s mimicry of Western models failed when they

Thus on Thailand’s theory no part of the frontier as delimited is safe or

If it Pleasure the Court

If there is an erotics of the map, connected with pleasurable feelings

Acheson’s refutation involves the judges in rubbing maps together:

One statement, however, can be made without contradiction: it is not, I am

Acheson then (with a dramatic gesture?) produced Cambodian

‘Witnesses have now blandly conceded glaring and material errors . . .’

It may be pointed out that while Ackermann, the expert witness

rubbing of maps. Helped by Acheson’s brilliant services, the Temple

As Seni’s description alleging Cambodian guile implies, it was almost

When Thailand becomes neutral, we will no longer be able to count on

And so to keep a strongly aligned Thailand in the game, Sihanouk

Prince Sihanouk was furious. He went before the Cambodian

nothing,’ an event took place at Preah Vihear in June 1979, almost

The World Court repressed the constitutive founding violence of the

a paper entitled ‘The Kui of Cambodia and Siam’ in 1952, which

Picturesque Ruins and Uneasy Ghosts

Seltzer, Mark. 1992. Bodies and Machines. New York: Routledge.

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