The Changing Face of Southeast Asia by Amry Vandenbosch & Richard A. Butwell

Author:Amry Vandenbosch & Richard A. Butwell [Vandenbosch, Amry & Butwell, Richard A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Military, Vietnam War, Political Science, World, History, Asian, General
ISBN: 9780813101125
Google: 00coEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 10537049
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 1966-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

CAMBODIA

Land of Strange Politics

CAMBODIA IS A kingdom of about 70,000 square miles wedged in between Thailand, Laos, South Vietnam, and the Gulf of Siam. Its population of more than 6,000,000 is rapidly growing. Between 85 and 90 percent of the population are Khmers, whose ancestors moved down from the northwest into the Mekong Delta two thousand years before the Christian era. Their culture and religion were strongly influenced by Hinduism over a long period, beginning in the first century A.D. The Khmers were under pressure from various peoples, but about the year 800 there emerged the Khmer kingdom of Kambuja (now Cambodia), with its capital at Angkor, which developed a great civilization as evidenced by its surviving monumental structures, chief of which is the temple at Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious building.

From the twelfth century on, the Khmer kingdom was subjected to steadily intensified pressure from the Thai people in the north. Angkor fell in 1431. Khmer culture declined; Hinayana Buddhism was adopted from the Thai. In the seventeenth century the Khmers began to experience pressure on the east from the kingdom of Annam in present-day Vietnam which by 1700 had won control over the Mekong Delta. A remnant of the Khmer people constitutes an important minority in South Vietnam today and serves as a reminder of the earlier greatness of the Khmer kingdom, while the presence of some 400,000 Vietnamese in Cambodia keeps alive the fear of Vietnamese aggression. Caught between the rival forces of the Thai and Annamese (or Vietnamese) kingdoms, Cambodia in 1846 became a vassal of both. The establishment of the French protectorate over the kingdom in 1863 probably saved it from extinction, although France in 1887 ceded several northern provinces to Thailand, only to exert pressure on Thailand two decades later (1904 and 1907) to return them. During the Japanese occupation the ancient pressure from the north reasserted itself. In 1941, Thailand, with Japanese connivance and support, recovered most of this territory, only to surrender it again after the war.

There were few people with a formal education in Cambodia before the Second World War; virtually no native middle class existed, and there was no nationalist movement of any consequence. The king was Norodom Sihanouk, who came to the throne in 1941, at the age of 19. A few days after the Japanese coup of March 9, 1945, the king repudiated the existing treaties with France and proclaimed the independence of his country, but shortly after the French troops in October occupied Phnom Penh, he declared his loyalty to France. However, he also assured his people that he had not forgotten their aspirations for independence. On January 7, 1946, Cambodia and France signed an agreement reestablishing French control over the country. France sent technicians and furnished capital to help develop the country, and used its influence to induce Thailand to restore the “lost provinces.” Relations between the two countries for a few years were cordial. By a treaty of November 8, 1949, France recognized

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