The two main features of the post-Angkorean era were a shift of the capital from rice growing hinterlands of Northwestern Cambodia to the trade-oriented riverbanks in the vicinity of Phnompenh one the one hand and the increasing importance of the foreign powers in Cambodian internal affairs on the other ,It seems clear that the apparent self sufficiency of Angkor was as much related to the absence of military rivals as to inherent strength or flexibility in Angkorean institutions, many of these institutions,infact persisted into the post-Angkorean era and got in the way of rapid bureaucratic
responses ( supposing that this was psychologically possible or culturally rewarding ) in the fact of foreign and domestic pressure.
Because of the shortage of data , it is impossible to trace that ideological history of Cambodian Villagers or to compare their responses to experiences in the Angkorean era to those in subsequent times , how much difference did it make for them to become Theravada Buddhists, for example ? what were the effects on daily life of the commercialization of the elite after 1500- to say nothing of the other changes noted in this chapter? did the European they saw have any effect on them ? and what differences did they perceive, aside from linguistic ones, in being "Cambodian"instead of Thai ?
There were several important changes between the fourteenth century and the beginning of nineteenth and the most important of these, perhaps , was the decline in importance of a Brahmanical priestly class that had effectively linked landholdings, control of slaves ,religious practices, education, and the throne,perhaps equally important, but harder to pin down, was the widespread and apparently increasing influence of the Thai on Cambodian life, Frank Huffman has shown that the transformation that occurred in the Khmer language in the post-Angkorean period, which reached its climax the nineteenth century amounted to the replacement of Angkorean syntax by its Thai counterpart. Saveros Pos regarded this process as inimical to Cambodian identity,especially in terms of its effects on literary style, but recognized its importance in the history of the period.
Another important change- the intrusion of the Vietnamese, into Cambodian life-came latter on, reaching peaks in the nineteenth and twentieth century even in the eighteenth century, however, Vietnamese activities had the effect of sealing off Cambodia from the outside world at exactly the point when other Southeast Asian countries, especially Siam were opening up.
A final change was the decline in the popularity of Kingship, of all the post-Angkorean Kings of Cambodian ,only Duang 1848-1860 and Norodom Sihanouk seem to have struck a sustained chord of popular approval , the discontinuity between the Palace and the people that is noticeable in the legal anecdotes of the 1690s, probably widened in the chaos that affected the entire country in the following century, but this"decline" like many notions put forward about Cambodian history,is impossible to verify, after all ,during the heyday of Angkor ,we have only the Kings'own words to support the notion that they were popular. like the Ramayana , the King and his entourage had roles to play in people's thinking, but they played Central roles only in their own, although Clifford Greertz phrase "Theater state" -originally applied to precolonial Java and more recently to nineteenth century Bali- Can be used with caution to describe Cambodian court life, most Cambodian people probably knew and cared less about it than some scholars.entranced perhaps by the exoticism of these arrangements, might prefer,in periods of stability, of course Cambodians may well have had more time for ceremony,and more surplus to pay for ceremonies ,than in periods of warfare, famine.or distress ,between 1750 and 1850. however ,the King's failure to deliver protection and stability probably undermined his relevance in the eyes of rural poor, but the texts that have survived are ambiguous and inconclusive at the same time, the rural poor could imagine no alternative set of political or patronage arrangements, outside of easily snuffed-out millenarian rebellions , that could grant them the protection they needed to plant, harvest, and survive.
The end of conclusions.
