Cambodia also thought of their Country,metaphorically,as a walled city with several imaginary gates,one chronicle places these at Sambor in the Northwest, Mekong,kompong Svay North of Tonle Sap, Posat in the Northwest,Kampot on the Coast,and Chau Doc,technically.across the frontier in Vietnam in the Mekong Delta,Fittingly,these gates were the place where invading armies traditionally swept in to Cambodia ,the territory they enclosed,in in the form of a gigantic Letter "C" there was no Eastern gate,for armies did not cross the Anna-mite cordillera covered roughly half the area of Cambodia today.Society and Economy
Little information about the size and composition of Cambodia's Population in the period has survived.during the period of Vietnamese suzerainty in the 1830s,a census was taken,but the Vietnamese dismissed its figures as deflated French administrators in the1860s,working from roughly compiled Tax rolls, estimated Cambodia's population at slightly less than a million, the area between Cambodia's imaginary gates,therefore,may have supported about three-quarters of million people in 1840s,but probably fewer,for the records are filled with accounts of regions being depopulated by famine flight,and invading armies.
This population was overwhelmingly rural, the largest town,Phnom Penh, probably never held more than twenty five thousand people the Royal Capital at Udong and the villages around it supported a population of ten thousand or so in the late 1850s,and the Khmer speaking City at battambong, rebuilt by the Thai in late 1830s,had three thousand inhabitants in 1839s,the only parts of the Kingdom that were relatively densely settled before the 1860s were those to the south and east of Phnom Penh, like Ba Phnom and Bati , and to the north along the Mekong river South of Chhloung ,significantly,
these relatively wealthy Srok were often located outside the routes of invation and retreat chosen by the Thai and Vietnamese.nearly all the people were Ethnic Khmer, who occupied themselves with rice farming and with monastic and official life, commercial and industrial tasks were handled by minority groups,marketing, garden farming,and foreign trade,for example,were handled by Chinese or by people of Chinese descent,Cattle trading,weaving, and commercial fisheries were controlled by a Muslim minority composed partly of immigrations fromMalay archipelago-misleadingly known as Chvea or Javanese,in Khmer-and partly of immigrations from Champa,the Kui people in northern part of the country smelted Cambodia's small deposits of iron ore,in the Capital,a handful of descendants of Portuguese settles who had arrived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries served as translators for the King and were in Charge of his artillery pieces before 1830s there seem to have been few Vietnamese residents indeed,even without accurate statistics,it seem likely that there were proportionately fewer of these various groups in the Kingdom until the arrival of the French, when the numbers of Chinese and Vietnamese residents in particular increase enormously.near the imaginary gates in thinly populated Srok like Kratie .Porsat and Kompong svay, tribal groups,such as the Porr,Stieng and Somrae lived insolated villages and collected the forest products that formed the main source of a Mornarch's income and bulk of goods that Cambodia sent abroad.by the standards of other states in Southeast Asia ,Cambodia was poor,unlike Burma and Laos, its soil contained few germs or precious metals.unlike Siam.its manufacturing,trade,and commerce were underdeveloped and finished goods ,like Brass ware,Porcelain,and Firearms,came from abroad,unlike Vietnam.Its communications were poor and its internal markets undeveloped,Agricultural and surpluses were rare saving were low,and money was used only at the Palace and by minority groups,Cambodia had a subsistence economy,most of its people spent most of their time growing rice,Landholdings tended to be small- even high officials seldom had access to more than a few Hectares- yields were low,and irrigation works, which might have increased production,were rare.
To the Vietnamese emperor,Minh Mang, writing in 1834 Cambodia was truly "barbarian" country because"The people do not know the the proper way to grow food,they use mattocks and hoes,but no Oxen, they grow enough rice to have two meal a day,but they do not know how to store rice for an emergency" villagers often maintained a common pond, or Trapaeng , to water their rice,but there were no longer any of the dams and canals that had characterized Angkorean Civilization, this was partly because there were now so few mouths to feed, there were no incentives and little technology for farmers to vary their crops or increase their holding, communications between the Srok were Poor,there were no Road to speak of until the 1830s,and bandits,invading armies,and the followers of local officials carried off what surpluses they could find..Foreign trade was restricted by the fact that the potentially important intrepid of Phnom Penh was cut off from the outside world for most of this period by the authorities in Southern Viet Nam.after 1808 in fact visitors to to PhnomPenh needs Vietnamese permission to go there.Prot on Gulf of Siam.like Kampot,engaged in some coastal and en insular trade , but they were more closely integrated into the Vietnamese and Thai economies than into Cambodia one,
A few ships traded with central Cambodia ever year,Cargo list from two of these,bound for China and Japan respectively in about 1810 have survived their cargo consisted of relatively small amounts of several different products 300 pound of Ivory and 200 pounds of pepper,for example.were among the good exported to Japan ,those going to China included small consignments of Cardamom,hides
tortoise shell,and aromatic wood exported to Vietnam in the 1820s trade with Vietnamese was conducted partly in a tributary framework -included such Goods as ivory Gut ta Percha,Cardamom,Dry Fish,and Elephant hides,
These were traditional exports,the list are like others that have come down from the seventeenth century and even from Angkorean period,external trade-including tribute,as we shall see-was an important source of the King's revenues and probably was important to the Chinese community in Phnom Penh and to privileged members of the King's entourage,but it was insignificant as far as the rest of the Country was concerned, most Cambodians lived in the villages ,these can be divided,for the early nineteenth century at lease,into three broad types,the first can be called "KomPong" after the Malay word meaning "Landing-place"which often formed part of their names as in "Kom Pong Svay"
and "Kom Pong Som"these were located along navigable bodies of water and could support populations of several hundred people,often they would include Chao Vai Srok and his assistants,
the Kom Pong was usually enclosed in a stockade, some of the inhabitants were likely to be Chinese or Sino Khmer,Maly,and Cham, although minorities tended to keep to themselves in separate hamlets the formed elements of Kom Pong, Kom Pong were in touch with others on the same body of water, with rice growing villages around them,and indirectly with the Capital and the Court through trading,Travel,Hearsay,and Invasions,people in Kom Pong had some awareness of evens elsewhere.
Rice growing villages,the second category,enclosed the Kom Pong ideally,in a broken arc,poorer and smaller then Kom Pong,rice growing villages were numerous and more likely to be populations by ethnic Khmer,Houses were scattered around in no special order near s Buddhist Monastery, or Wat,
and also near the Pond or stream that provided water for the village, rice growing village were linked to the Kom Pong and the world beyond in irregular ways-through incursions of officials looking for recruits or rice,through the Wat, who Monks were encouraged to travel about in the dry season,
through festivals at the new year and at other points in the calendar and through trade with the Kom Pong ,exchanging rice and forest products for Metal,Cloth and Salt,
Rice growing villages were unstable because they lacked means of defense and because ,unlike in Viet nam,no institutionalized ancestor cult anchored people to one place rather than another,the chronicles are filled with references to villagers running off into the forest in times of crisis,in times of peace,their lives were sharped by the contours of the agricultural year and ceremonies -Buddhist .Animist,and Vaguely Hindu- that marked off one stage of the rice-growing cycle from another, The opposition between"Wild and Civilized", notes in the discussion of the "Ream Kei"in chapters 5,persisted in the literature of the nineteenth century ,a Verse chronicle from Wat Baray ,in the north-central part of the Kingdom.Deals with this theme repeatedly while offering a chronological treatment of nineteenth century events, the chronicle relates the fortunes of a bureaucratic family caught up in the turmoil of Viet nam occupation and Civil war,driven in to the forest ,they lose their identity,regaining it only when new titles are bestowed on male members,first by a Thai Monarch and letters by a Cambodian one,the chronicle was composed to celebrated the restoration of Wat Baray in 1856,and the audience to whom it was recited would for the most part have recognized the even related it in as true ,what gives the chronicle its literacy resonance is the way in which the lives of the characters follow patterns laid down for them by the Ream Kei,and Buddhist ideology, the restoration of their status accompanied the restoration of the King.demerit was seen,in some way,as associated with the forest a lack of official titles,and misbehavior impossible to trace.
Similarity,in a poignant Cambodian folktale,probably well known in the 1800s,three girl who who are abandoned by their mother become wild and return to birds, happily crossing the border between forest and field where,as it turns out,the birds they have become are most frequently to be found,because people grip on the things we take for granted was so precarious in nineteenth century Cambodia -dependent on the good will of foreigners and Overlords,on rainfall,and on health in a tropical climate- it is understandable that"Civilization" or the art of remaining outside the forest,was taken so seriously by Poets and Audience alike,the third type of village lay hidden in the "Prey"or Wilderness" that make up most of Cambodia at this time.here the people were illiterate and usually non-Buddhist,they spoke languages related to Khmer but owed no loyalties to the Kompong or Capital unless these had been forced from them,the villages were frequently raided for slaves,and they were economically important because they were able to exploit forest resource that were valued in the Capital and abroad,their political loyalties,however,were to other villages in the "Prey" where people spoke the same dialect and performed similar religious rites,.,
The End of Society,State&Foreign Relations.
