Fortunately for historians, there is a while range of sources to consult in Thai,Cambodian , and
Vietnamese, the record that the sources reveal, however, is complete, for example, the ruler of Cambodia for much of this period, King Chan, is rarely quoted in surviving sources, and none of his own writings have survived, a crucial actor has no lines similarly, Thai language sources often thin out just when we might wish to have more information about the politics of Thai foreign policy in the period.
The period opens and closes with Thai- sponsored coronations , between these two events and particularly after 1810, invasions from Vietnam and Siam alternated with internal rebellions and court sponsored resistance to invaders while the court,especially under Chan, pursued a dangerous policy apparently aimed at preserving independence( or merely staying alive) by playing the Thai and the Vietnamese off against each other, although the political history of the period is reasonably clear, the politics leading up to the events , and people's motivations ,are often difficult to discern, the pattern that emerges is one in which Cambodia drifted first away from Thai control, then into the hands of the Vietnamese, and finally back to Thai protection, by the early 1840s, much of its territory , the capital region in particular ,was administered as a component of Vietnam, three events in drift can be singled out for study, these are the Thai absorption of Northern Cambodia in exchange for putting Eng on the throne, the anti- Vietnamese millenarian rebellion that broke out in Southeastern Cambodia in 1820, and the succession crisis of 1835 following a disastrous Thai military expedition, each of these events marked a stage in the process of Cambodia's diminishing ability to control its own affairs.
The Imposition of Vietnamese Control
Eng's restoration in 1794 is treated in the Cambodian chronicles as an event of miraculous significance when he left Bangkok, they assert," the sky did not grow dark, nor did rain fall. but
thunder boomed in the noon sky, marking a noise like a mighty storm. the restoration was indeed dramatic, for in the preceding fifteen years Cambodia had not been governed at all, a former official name Baen had been installed in Udong by the Thai, had been given the title of Ta-La-Ha, or first minister, and had busied himself with recruiting troops to fight the Tay-Son inside Cambodia and in Vietnam, in 1794, after so many years of service, Rama I seems to have felt obliged to reward him in some way.
The reward he chose to bestow, however, was hardly his ti give ,as it consisted of the large and prosperous Srok of Battambong and Mahanokor (or Great City" containing the ruins of Angkor") Baen had held power in this region for part of the 1780s and probably retained a personal following there, but in awarding the two Srok to him, Rama, I removed them from Eng's jurisdiction without absorbing them into Siam, in the 1790s and for most of the nineteenth century, Thai suzerainty seems to have meant only that Baen and his successors were not obligated to provide labours for Eng and had to transmit gifts- generally wild cardamom- to Bangkok from time to time.
Detail about the transfer are impossible to uncover, and perhaps documents were never drawn up, in the 1860s, in fact, a French official in Cambodia seeking information about the Thai claims, recorded to his superiors that (Siam) is unable to present any documentation about the cession, the present King of Cambodia ( Eng's grandson Norodom) his officials old men who have been consulted, and Eng's widow, who is still alive, are all of the opinion that none exists.
In the twentieth century , however, the the loss, of the two Srok poisoned Thai-Cambodian relations
After building him-selves a Palace in Udong and visiting Bangkok with a tributary mission in 1796 Eng died at the beginning of 1797, his Reign had been uneventful, and his contributions to Cambodian history were almost inadvertent, by returning to Udong, which had been without a King for so long, he brought Cambodia back to life, by fathering four sons, he founded a dynasty that was to Reign in Udong and Phnompenh until 1970, these two contributions rather than specific actions on his part, probably account for the reverence with which he is treated in Cambodian chronicles compiled for his descendants.
The next ten years, until his son Chan's coronation in 1806, are poorly documented, but for reasons that remain unclear, the young prince became alienated from the Thai court at some point and seems to have begun to formulate a pro- Vietnamese foreign policy, what ever its causes Thai sources hint at a feud between the young prince and Rama , I- Chan anti- Thai orientation is a present theme of his long Reign.
As soon as he had been Crowned, for example, he hastened to strengthen Cambodia's tributary connections with Vietnam while maintaining his subservience to Bangkok, becoming, in the words of the Vietnamese emperor, an independent country that is the slave of two. the process was even more complicated for Chan's increasing animosity toward the Thai alienated some of his own Chaovay-Srok especially in the northwest,and his personal insecurity is indicated by his request to the Vietnam
emperor at about his time that he be allowed to recruit Vietnamese residents of Cambodia to from his personal bodyguard, the pace of his alienation from Bangkok accelerated after Rama. I' death in 1809, Chan refused to attend the ceremony showed signs of being pro-Thai, Chan had them executed without trail.
in 1811 to 1812 conflict broke out inside Cambodia between Thai and Vietnamese, expeditionary forces, the Thai supported one of Chan's dissident brothers. the Vietnamese responded to Chan's request for help all three of Chan's brothers fled to Bangkok at this time, leaving him free for the rest of his Reign to pursue a pro Vietnamese policy, even though the campaigns of 1811- 1812, were indecisive, their net effect was to reduce Chan's freedom of action, as his growing dependence on the Vietnamese was greater than his former allegiance, so reluctantly given, to Bangkok. twice a month, wearing Vietnamese bureaucratic costumes supplied by Hue', the King and his entourage had to visit a moved in 1812- and bow before a tablet bearing the Vietnamese emperor's name over the next twenty years, Chan fought with decreasing success to achieve a modicum of independence.
Three events stand out from these early years of relatively loose Vietnamese control, these are the unsuccessful Cambodian attack on the Northwestern Srok in 1816, the excavation of the Vinh Tre Canal in Southern Vietnam,using Cambodian labor, around 1820, and the anti-Vietnamese uprising that broke out soon afterward in Southeastern Cambodia and in Khmer-populated portions of Vietnam.
The military expedition of 1816 was the last attempt before the 1960s, by normally constitution Cambodian army to take the offensive against foreign troops, and it was a failure, perhaps to placate the Thai, or merely because the campaign had failed, Vietnamese authorities in Phnompenh asked Chan to discipline the Oknha who had led the expedition,taken to Saigon afterward, the official was reprimanded and fined, the sequence of events, although not significant in itself, epitomized Chan's helplessness in face of Vietnamese pressure.
The Vinh Tre Canal. in turn, became a symbol of Vietnamese mis-treatment of the Khmer, and the re billion that followed its excavation revealed the depth of anti-Vietnamese feeling in the Srok, the persistence of millenarianism , and perhaps the ambiguities in Chan's subservience to the Vietnamese in 1817, Vietnamese officials in Saigon recruited several thousand Vietnamese and a thousand Cambodian workers to excavate- or perhaps merely to restore- the Ving Tre Canal ,running between the Gulf of Siam and the fortified citadel of Chau-Doc, a distance of perhaps 40 Km(25 mile) according to a Cambodian chronicle, work on the canal was arduous in the extreme, worker were divided in to groups one Vietnamese marched at the head of each group, another at the back, and a third in the middle,. the Vietnamese would beat the Cambodians on the back, to make them hurry
...everyone was exhausted ,and covered with mud.
This account of the excavations is fellowed immediately by an account of an anti-Vietnamese rebellion, place by other source in 1820-1821 this suggests a causal relationship between the two events, which is reinforced by the fact that revolt broke out fairly close to the site of the canal, this site was Ba-phnom, a small mountain in Southeastern Cambodia that Codes identified with "Funan" and also with" Jayavarman II's arrival in Cambodia from Java". in the nineteenth century it was an important population center and also a religious site, the Ba-Phnom revolt was led by Khmer Monk name Kai. who claimed to be a holy-man capable of marking predictions, as he gathered allegedly invulnerable supporters a round him, he forged a political movement, moving North and West from the vicinity of Ba-Phnom, his followers attacked Vietnamese military posts, a mixed Khmer- Vietnamese force sent against him by Chan Failed, one source asserts , because the Oknha in charge of it deserted with their troops and turned on Vietnamese, a purely Vietnamese force sent from Saigon, however, eventually defeated the rebels near Kom-Ponh-Cham, the leaders were executed in Saigon, and some of their followers were beheaded in Phnom-Penh.
The differences between Cambodia and the Vietnamese accounts of the rebellions pose interesting historiographical problems, such as where Chan's loyalties lay. Chan may known Kai as a monk in Phnompenh, and any case the King,whom the Vietnamese were to find "extremely superstitious"
toward the end of his Reign would probably not have moved vigorously against Khmer believed to have supernatural powers , what ever Chan's views might have been, his response to the rebellion had to be restricted and discreet, there are parallels here with the situation that faced his nephew, King Norodom, in 1884, when an anti-French rebellion led by Oknha broke out in the countryside while Norodom was under French protection in Phnompenh, similar problems also confronted his great grandson, Norodom Sihanouk, in turn, in the 1950s, and again in 1970-1975.
It is unclear how large the rebellion was o how much of threat it posed in military and territorial terms. we know a little about its goals beyond the assassination of Vietnamese, Vietnamese records understandably play down its importance, the locally oriented Bangsavada (ពង្សាវត្តា) probably exaggerates its extent, momentum, and success all source agree, however, that it was directed against the Vietnamese rather than against Chan and his Oknha and that monks, former monks, and local officials were active in its ranks.
The chronicle version composed in 1850s tended to confirm its audience's idea about themselves , the Vietnamese, and history, all Vietnamese were Cruel, "People of Merit" Nak Sell were powerful, and Khmer could not(or at least should not) be make to fight against Khmer,the Buddhist orientation of the text can be seen when we learn that the Nak-Sel followers were rendered invincible by prayers and amulets but lost this invincibility when they acted contrary to Buddhist law by Killing people themselves , without the special powers connected with nonviolence, the rebels-including former monks were all slaughtered and when they died," Rain fell for seven days, It fell without stopping, night and day, the unimportant and the mighty were force to run for shelter, in the cold air, everybody shook , they was no way of knowing when the sun set or when it rose the nation was unhappy"
It would be difficult to over tress the atmosphere of threat, physical danger, and random violence that pervades primary sources like this one and perhaps much of everyday life in nineteenth century Cambodia, the sources are filled with references to torture, executions, ambushes,massacres, village burning, and the forced movement of populations, the wars of the time were localized rather than national in Scopes,and expeditionary forces, which usually numbered only a few thousand men, were small by twentieth century standards ,at the same time invaders and defenders destroyed the villages they came to Killed or uprooted anyone they met, and ruined the landscape they moved across, very few prisoners of war taken or kept alive, a seventeenth century Cambodian law, translated by Adhe'mard lere' stated that an expeditionary force needed only three days' supply of food, because unfriendly populations that could be robbed were through to be never more than three days, march a way, parallels to the civil war that devastated Cambodia in the 1970s, and the behavior of both sides are obvious.
One enigma ពាក្យសួរ of this period is Chan himself, we know very little about him except that he was timid ,a Vietnamese text from 1822 states that he was ill much of the time and kept inside his Palace, the Vietnamese emperor wrote of him in 1834, just before his death, that a "fresh wind or the cry of a bird could make flee",at the same time ,Chan retained considerable freedom of maneuver, all through the 1820s he kept his lines of communication with Bangkok open, tributary missions went to Bangkok every year, and Chan May have used them to provide intelligence to Thai officials, to sound out Thai policies ,and to remain in contact with his brothers.
Relations between the two Kingdoms broke down in late 1820s as a result of Vietnamese support for ant- Thai rebellion that erupted in 1824-1825 around Vientiane. the breakdown also sprang from the fact that rulers in Hue' and Bangkok in the 1830s, Rama III and Minh Mang, unlike their fathers. owed nothing to each other and were free to pursue vigorous foreign policies, one of which was to increase influence, and suspicious of the Vietnamese viceroy in Cambodia, Le Van Dyuet, whom who believed- correctly, as things turned out to be as sociated with breakaway sentiment in Southern Vietnam.
The Thai make some tentative military probes into Western Cambodia in 1830-1831, but Rama III saw no chance of success until Dyuet' death in 1820, when Minh Mang attempted to replace the viceroy's ឧបរាជ្យ entourage with officials loyal to Hue', his move ignited a full scale rebellion that was centered around Saigon and led by Dyuet's adopted son.
News of the revolt quickly reached Rama II ,who decided to assemble an expeditionary force, he saw several advantages in doing so, first, he could humiliate Minh Mang, whose forces had been tangentially involved Vientiane rebellion and elsewhere in the Thai tributary states of Lao, by seeking to establish a new tributary state in Southern Vietnam, moreover, Rama III may have planning to extend Thai and Sino-Thai, commercial interests and to profit directly from the trade between Saigon (Cho-Lon) and Southern China, for Chinese merchants in Vietnam had supported the rebellion ឧទ្ទាមកម្ម and had informed their counterparts in Bangkok. Finally, the Thai King may have been impressed by reports reaching him from Cambodia that many Oknha would now welcome the return of Chan's two brothers , Im and Duang ( The third had died in Bangkok in 1825), the time was ripe, in Rama III's own words, to restore the Kingdom of Cambodia and to punish the insolenceការព្រហើន of Vietnam.
In the short run, the campaign was a success, the Vietnamese quickly abandoned Phnompenh and took Chan into exile in Vietnam, the Thai Commander, Chaophraya (roughly,Lord) Bodin ,then occupied the capital, but soon, poor communications with the naval forces attached to the expedition, which were supposed to attack the Vietnamese coast, combined with Vietnamese attacks forced him to withdraw in early 1834.
The Thai political strategy of placing Imand Duang in power also failed, because the two unable to attract support, one chronicle,in fact, describes people's confusion early in the war, as Bodin's forces entered the Kingdom:
The people were surprised to see such a large army, and they shook with fear, the head of the army shouted them, don't be afraid! his royal highness the King(sic) has arrived to rule over you, the people murmured about this, and sent messengers off to inform the King (ie Chan) in Phompenh.
In Bodin's retreat from Phnompenh approximately four thousand local people were carried off, of these, perhaps a thousand managed to escape as the overburdened Thai column reached Udong, these people then" Wandered trembling and afraid in deep woods as the Thai columns moved North and West, they disintegrated, and at about this time, the rebellion in Saigon was finally suppressed"
The end of Cambodia, the Crisis of the nineteenth century
