Little information has survived about the way Cambodian Villages were governed in the early nineteenth century, some French writers have asserted that Cambodian Villages had no government at all ,and in the most of them, indeed, relations with outsiders and with the state were sporadic and unfriendly, quarrels within a Village or among neighbors were settled by conciliation rather by Law, and they often smoldered on for years, Villages were usually"Ruled"for ceremonial purposes and for the purposes of relations with higher authorities, by elderly men chosen for their agricultural skill, literacy,and fair-mindedness, taxes in rice and labor seem to have been paid, irregularly, on demand. Village government was perhaps more noticeable in the Kompong, where there were more officials and hangers-on, but there is no evidence that any Villages in Cambodia were governed by formally constituted councils of elders ,as was the case in nineteenth-century.
Rice growing Villages and those in the Prei could be days a part from each other and from the nearest representative of authority , in their isolation , the Villagers faced to be lives and traditions they shared with one another,they identified themselves and saw their history in term of localized religious
traditions passed on from one generation to the next, outside the Villages, just past the fields in most cases, lay the Prei ,crowded with wild animals malarial mosquitoes,and the spirits of the dead,beyond
the Prei , where Villagers seldom ventured, lay the world of Kompong ,the Capital, and the Court.
French writers in nineteenth century often denigrated Cambodian Society (one of them referred to its institutions as "worm eaten" de'bris" and compared it unfavorably with their own "Rational" centralized one or with that of the Vietnamese, the trend has continued among some anthropologist អ្នកវិទូ concerned with Thailand, who refer to Thai peasant Society as "loosely structured, the phrase is helpful whether or not one attaches values to "Tight structure"-in the sense that in Thai and Cambodian Villages in nineteenth century, there were no "Durable". functionally important groups, or voluntary associations aside from the family and the Buddhist monastic order, or Sangha "when a Villages organized itself- for defence, for instance, or for a festival-it did so for a short time in response, for instance, response to specific need.
Despite the apparent informality of these arrangements , there was considerable structural consistency in each Cambodia Villages and family, this arose from the fact that Cambodians always identified themselves in terms of their status relative to the person being addressed, this identification located them for the moment at particular, but no mean fixed ,point in a flexible set of dyadic relationships extending downward from the King and the Sangha through the graded bureaucracy of the capital and Kompong to the Villages and past them to the landless debt-slaves and minority people living literally at the edges of the state as with most systematic social arrangements ,what mattered to the people who used it was the place they occupied ,if a person's place was relatively secure ,people in weaker positions sought him out and offered homage in exchange for protection, the Society, in a sense was fueled by the exchange of protection and service implied in these ,Lopsided friendships" as they have been called in a village context, these links might be with older or more fortunate members of one's family, monks in the local Wat, Bandit leader, government officials , or holy-men( Naek-Sel) who appeared from time to time, promising their followers invulnerability and riches.
In the Kompong and the capital where people no longer grew their own food, patronage and client ship became more important and more complex, having a patron and having clients was connected with one'e chances to survive, people with access to power accepted as many followers or slaves as the could, in many cases, these men and women had contracted debts to their patrons, which they then spent their lifetimes working off, the widespread presence of slavery in nineteenth century Cambodia should cloud over, to an extent, the sunny notion that clients entered their "lopsided friendship" as volunteers with a variety of choices but it is true that many people enslaved themselves to a patron, or me (the world can also mean"Mother ) to protect themselves against the rapacity of others.
The rectitude and permanence of these relationships had been drummed into everyone from birth, Cambodian proverbs and the didactic literature are filled with references to the helplessness of the individual and to the importance of accepting power relationships as they are ,both sides of the patron-client equation, in theory at least, saw their relationships as natural, even obligatory ones," The rich must protect the poor" a Cambodian proverb runs "Just as clothing protects the body".
The relationships were seldom that genteel, throughout Southeast Asia patrons ,like kins, spoke of "Consuming" the territory and people they controlled ,and there are few just officials in Cambodian folklore, in which officials are compared to tigers, crocodiles and venomous snakes, rural government was seen as an adversary proceeding, in one Srok at least, when a new Chaovay Srok took office, a cockfight was held, one bird represented the newly arrived official, the other the people of the Srok, the outcome of the fight supposedly gave both sponsors a hint about the balance of power that was excepted to ensue.
Why did the people accept these demeaning arrangements? partly it was a case of force majeure these alternatives of individual flight or organized resistance were often impossible, moreover, a man without a patron was fair game, and an unknown patron, like a foreigner, was more of a threat than one who lived nearby, although the Chaovay Srok often "ate" what little material wealth he could get his hands on , the social distance between him and the rest of the Kompong was not especially great , he wives, for example, were local women ,he lived in simple house,chewed betel,and sponsored festivals at the Wat and ceremonies to propitiate ធ្វើអោយស្ងប់ចិត្ត Nak Ta,these officials shared their clients "food, their belief in image, their vigorous sense of the absurd, and their distrust of other officials and all outsiders, probably because they lived among the people they supposedly controlled, Chaovay Srok were more responsive to local issues than were authorities in the Capital, the fact that all these "Lopsided friendships" could be renegotiated in a times of stress added to the instability of the system and perhaps to its attractiveness in the eyes of Villagers and slaves.
The most Cambodians, these shifting networks of subordination and control, chosen or imposed, benevolent or otherwise, marked the limits of there experience and of their social expectations, their ideas about the King, on the other hand, and about the Buddhist Sangha took a different form and were expressed in different language, although it is useful to place the King and the Sangha at the end of imaginary chains of local and spiritual authority extending down through the officials to the people, the people saw them as operating on a different plane and and on different set of assumptions .little is known about the Sangha in nineteenth century Cambodia, and it could be misleading to assert that conditions were the same as those in Siam or Burma, there is no evidence ,
for example,That the Sangha played a politic roles (Vis-a Vis) the royal family, although Monks and Ex-Monks were active in the anti- Vietnamese rebellion of 1821, by and large, Monks were widely respected as repositories កន្លែងដាក់ទុក of merit, as sources of spiritual patronage, and as curators of Cambodia's literary culture, they occupied a unique and thus mysterious place in Cambodian life became they had abandoned-temporarily at least- agriculture, politics and marriage.
People's idea about the King tended to be grounded in mythology rather than their own experience, the relationship of the King to most of his subjects was not negotiated ,rarely enforced, and seldom face to face, for most of the early nineteenth century, by choice or by circumstance, the monarch was confined to his palace or lived in exile in Siam or Vietnamese, because they never saw him and because of the weight of traditional and popular literature about him. Villagers' views of the King tended to be vaguer and more approving than their views of each other, their patrons, or even the Nak-Ta The King was at one as real (and as unreal) as the Lord Buddha, people would have accepted the Ramayana's description of Royal duties , they were" to be consecrated, to sacrifice, and to protect the people, many of them believed that the King could influence the weather, unlike the Sauphea, or Judges ,he could dispense true justice, he was often the only political source of hope among peasants, this does not mean that he was always or even often in their thoughts ,but when he appeared in his capital after years of exile ,like Aong Eng 1794 and Duang , nearly half a century later, the event ignited widespread rejoicing.
There were several other segments of Cambodian Society that affected people's lives in the Villages and the outcome of Cambodian politics as a whole, these included minor Srok officials and hangers-on, who were appointed in some case from capital and in other by the Chaovay Srok, ex-monks or Achar, ,who acted as religious spokesmen and millenarian leaders, often in opposition to the Chaovay Srok itinerant traders actors, and musicians, and poor relations of the rich, who were able to act as go between, unfortunately, the elite- centered chronicle usually devote little to these categories of people , so it is difficult to assess their power, except directly ,a rice- growing Village going into revolt against the Vietnamese- as many did in 1820, for example,was unlikely to have done so merely through the exhortations of high -Official.
Like people say ate someone food to saved their life.who lived in in Sihanouk regime like his politics,
but, now you refereed to Hun-sen leader who own land ,his own powers, Society by his families,thus
his education like 5 grade, but their officials like crocodile, snakier,
you watch all TV's or sat in cafe' Internet in Cambodia ,most of them rules by Cambodia people Party,it took 5 hours politics discuss, and 1 hours Kid s program,so why Cambodia Society so weakness between communicated each other parents and teacher,and the teachers with students.
The end of Patronage and Government of Cambodia
