Two events of major political importance stand out from the last ten years or so of Sisowath's Reign there are the so called 1916 affair and the murder of French resident,Felix Louis Bardez in rural Kompongchhnang in 1925, the first of these revealed how little the French knew about communications and social organization in Cambodia after more than fifty years of control, the second, perhaps because it was the only incident of its kind in the colonial era, shocked the regime and was blown out of proportion in post-colonial times by Cambodian nationalist writers.
The 1916 Affair: រឿងរ៉ាវក្នុងឆ្នាំ១៩១៦
To understand the 1916 affair, we must remember that the French financed almost all their activities in Cambodia, including public works and the salaries of french officials, by a complex and onerous network of taxes on Salt, Alcohol, Opium, Rice and others Crops, and exported and imported goods and by levying extensive fees and all government services, of those too poor to pay their way out, the French could require ninety days per year of corvee', but people who paid their way out were still liable in many cases to other labor requirements, the cash to pay rice taxes came only when peasant householders had sold their harvests for cash or had been able to earn enough cash to pat the taxes by hiring themselves out in the off season, there was a certain amount of flexibility in the system, because tax records were poorly kept and local leaders tended to spread the tax burden more evenly through the population and incidentally, to increase their opportunities for profit.
During world war I, the French increased this burden throughout Indochina by floating war loans to which local people, especially " the leisure classes"( presumably Chinese merchants) were rather forcefully urged to subscribe, by levying additional tax', and by recruiting volunteers for military service abroad, in late November 1915, some three hundred peasants from the area Northeast of Phnompenh arrived in the capital with a petition to Sisowath asking him to reduce taxes, which although levied by the French, were collected by Cambodian officials, the King met the delegation and ordered its members to go home, promising vaguely that some adjustments would be made.
News of the confrontation apparently spread in the Srok to the East of Phnompenh- long a hotbed of anti-dynastic sentiment in any case and larger and larger delegations , some times numbering as many as three thousand peasants, began walking into capital and assembling outside the Palace to place their grievances before the King French residents reporting on these movements, registered their surprise not only at the magnitude of the delegations but also, as one wrote, that they had "been set in motion with such disconcerting speed." another mentioned that no one had predicted the affair. although, the entire population was involved, French people police estimated that some forty thousand peasants passed through Phnompenh in the early months of 1916 before being ordered back to their villages by the King, other estimates run as high as hundred thousand, scattered incidents in the Srok later in the year claimed half a dozen Cambodian lives, and at the same time, Sisowath toured the Eastern Srok by automobile. exhorting peasants to remain peacefully in their home and canceling any further corvee' for 1916.
In the long run, the 1916 affair had little effect on the way the French ran Cambodia or on Cambodian responses to the French, in fact, it is unclear that the demonstrations were against the French at all, French administrators were sidestepped by the petitioners, who sought justice directly from the King,. what is extraordinary about the demonstrations is the speed and efficiency with which they were organized by leaders whose identity and motives rema8in obscure the incident undermined French mythology about "Lazy" and individualistic" Cambodians supposedly impervious to leadership or Ideology,some french officials ,panicked by the size of the delegations, blamed the affair on German Agents" still others saw evidence of deep seated anti monarchic feeling, citing in evidence a manifesto that had circulated earlier in 1915, which stated, the French have made us very unhappy for many years by keeping bad people as the King and as officials while treating good people as bad.
Interestingly,in the 1916 affair coincided with serious anti-French demonstrations in Cochin-China, the possibility of links between the two was noted by some French officials, but the speed with which Cambodian disaffection died down suggest that people there had been demonstrating to relieve local wrongs.
In the nine years that passed before the assassination of Resident Bardez, the French so tightened and rationalized their control over Cambodia- and especially over the organization of revenue collection and day-to-day administration- that some"aged" Cambodian officials complained to them that " to many changes " were taking place, in 1920,for example, the French arranged for the rice taxes to be collected by local officials rather than officials sent to the Srok from Phnompenh, a year later, the French experimented with a " communal" reorganization of Cambodia along Vietnamese lines, only to drop the idea after a year or so, the French extended their supervisory role to cover local justice in 1923, expanded Wat education from 1924 onward, and used Corvee' to build an impressive array of public works, particularly roads and a mountain resort at Bokor, favored by the King, which was built by prisoners ( with a tremendous loss of life) and opened in 1925, the first rice mills had opened in Cambodia in 1917- previously, un-milled rice had been shipped to saigon- and the period 1916-1925, (first the noticeable exception of 1918-1919, a year of very poor harvests and, in some Srok, famine conditions) was one of increasing prosperity in Cambodia,especially for local Chinese merchants and the french.
The gap in income between the French and the Cambodians- with the rare exception of a few favored officials and the royal family was very wide, a French official could earn as much as 12.000 piastres a year, with exemptions for his wife and two children,such as official would pay only 30 piastres in tax,Cambodian officials were pay less for similar jobs and were the first to have their wages cut
during the depression of the 1930s, a Cambodian farmer, on the other hand, with no salary other than what he could sell his crops for ( seldom more than 40 piastres a year) was saddled with a range of taxes that totaled in the 1920s as much as 12 piastres per year, he was taxed individually and in cash payment in lieu of Corvee', his rice was taxed at fixed percentage, he paid high prices for salt, opium and alcohol and paid abattoir ទីសត្តឃាត taxes when his livestock went to slaughter.
What did the the peasant receive in exchange ? very little, despite French rhetoric វោហាសាស្រ្ត to the contrary, monthly reports from French residents show widespread rural violence and disorder, which, because it made no direct challenge to french control, seldom rose into the "political" portions of the reports, it is clear, however, that to most villagers the perpetual harassment of bandit gangs,
especially in the dry season, was far more real than any benefits brought to them by the French.
Before the 1930s. moreover, the French spent almost nothing on education, a French official in 1922 accurately characterized efforts in this field as a mere facade, medical services were also derisory, and electricity and running water were also almost unknown outside Phnompenh, Cambodia's money, in other words , went to finance French officials and the things they wanted to build , in exchange , Cambodia was protected from control by anyone else, as well as from the perils of independence, the French succeeded in keeping the nineteenth century from repeating itself while keeping the twentieth century at bay, the fear of, modernity runs through a good deal of French writing about colonial Cambodia, even though the French in another context perceived their role as one of transmitting modernity to the Khmer, because what they were supposed to be doing was not allowed to take place, the French took refuge in beliefs about the "innate " characteristics of the Cambodians, which kept them immune from modern ideas or inherently hostile to them.
These beliefs were based on less and less direct experience with the Cambodians themselves, the most articulates critic of French colonialism at this time , Andre' Pannetier, remarked that competence among French men in Khmer-language declined steadily as the twentieth century wore on, ironically as the adventure and romance of serving in Cambodia wore thin,the clinches' with
which French bureaucrats describe the Cambodian people became increasingly fuzzy and romantic,
the process came to a climax of sort in 1927, when former Governor- General Paul Doumer, by then president of French,unveiled a group of statues on the staircase that links the railroad station in Marseilles with the City below, one of these, entiled" our possessions in Asia, depicts a half naked teenage girl, decked out in approximately Angkorean garb, lying on a divan being waited on by smaller, half-clad girls representing Laos and Vietnam, as the Easiest" and oldest of French protectorates in Indochina, Cambodia was rewarded by being portrayed as the notion that Cambodians lay around receiving tribute of kind from the other two the notion that Cambodians lay around receiving tidbits, of course may also have been at the back of the sculptor's mind.
The end of Cambodia's Response to France, 1916-1945
