ពាក្យស្លោក
ពាក្យស្លោក..
២_កុំដើរទៅណា.បើឃើញខាតការ កូនកុំដើរជិត..
៣_សត្វក្តាមញាំច្រើនច្រងាម ពុំសូវពិសា បើក្តាមសមុទ្រ
គេច្រើនត្រូវការ ធ្វើជាអាហារ ដោយសារក្តាមប្រៃ..
៤_សត្វក្របីគេភ្ជួររាស់ដីធ្វើស្រែចំការ បានគ្រប់អាត្មា ក្របីនេះណាគួរអ្នកស្ងួនត្រង់..
៥_កវែងក្ងានឫកវាភុំផានគ្រាន់បើជាងទា ចំពុះកំប៉ែត ជើងជាប់ដូចគ្នា ចិត្តកាចពុំជា ដេញហួរកូនក្មេង..
៦_សត្វកណ្តុរ ចិត្តវាជាចោរ អាក្រក់ពេកក្រែវាលួចច្រិបកាត់ គេទុកជាសត្វអាក្រក់ពេកក្រៃ..
៧_ក្ងោកបក្សារូបល្អអស្ចារ្យ លើសលុបសត្វផង ស្លាបវាភ្លឺផ្លេកមានព៍ណបៃតង ជាន់ចាស់ធ្វើស្នង សូនមាស់ធ្វើរូប..
៨_សត្វខ្លានេះនៃ រស់នៅក្នុងព្រៃ ញាំជាអាហារសាច់សត្វនានា ចំអែតអាត្មា កំណាចអស្ចារ្យលើសលុបសត្វព្រៃ ទោះមនុស្សក្តីណា ចូលព្រៃព្រឹក្សាតែងតែប្រយ័ត្ន ដោយខ្លាចជួបខ្លា នោះណាជាសត្វកំណាចពេកក្តាត់ ភិតផ័យគ្រប់គ្នា..
៩_សត្វខ្លែងបក្សាហើររកអាហារឆក់ឆាបកូនមាន់ កាលឆក់ឆាបបានស្មានថាខ្លួនគ្រាន់ កាលម្ចាស់គេទាន់ជើងជាប់អន្ទាក់..
១០_សត្វគោគាប់ សត្វគោគេរាប់អានគ្រប់អាត្មា ប៉ែកកសិកម្ម ប្រើជាធម្មតា ធ្វើស្រែចំការសត្វគោនេះឯង..
១១_ងូតទឹកក្នុងពាង ចង់ស្អាតត្រូវលាង អោយជ្រះកាយា ជាគ្រឿងប្រដាប់សម្រាប់ប្រើការ បានគ្រប់អាត្មាមានពាងក្រោយផ្ទះ..
១២_ងេងងោក ងុយងោក ដូចស្រវឹងជោកដើរឆ្ងាយពុំបាន ងងិតមុខស្លុងត្រជាក់អស់ប្រាណ ប្រញាប់កុំខាន ហៅគេអោយជួយ...
១៣_ប្រយោជន៏ពីចាន ជាគ្រឿងចំណានសំរាប់ប្រើការ មានច្រើនបែបយ៉ាង ខាងដាក់អាហារ គេអោយឈ្មោះថា ចានក្បានតូចធំ..
១៤-ចិញ្ចៀនត្បូងឆ្នៃ ពាក់នៅម្រាមដៃ ជាគ្រឿងសំអាង សកតាមនាងដៃ មានច្រើនបែបយ៉ាង គេពាក់តែម្ខាងដៃឆ្វេងនោះនៃ...
១៥_ឆត្របាំងភ្លៀងថ្ងៃ មានថោកមានថ្លៃ ការពាអាត្មា ប្រដាប់មួយមុខទុកគ្រាន់ប្រើការ បើចេះរក្សាប្រើការបានយួរ..
១៦_ឆោមឆើតឆាយា ដល់អស់កុមា ប្រឹងរៀនវិជ្ជា និសិ្សតចំណាន បានចេះច្រើនគ្នា គ្រាន់បានការពារព្រះរាជអាណាចក្រ...
១៧_សត្វឆ្កែ ជាសត្វពូកែចាំផ្ទះសម្បែង បើមានមនុស្សប្លែក វាព្រុសកំហែង វាខាំដាច់កែង ហូរឈាមសស្រាក់...
១៨_ឆ្មាឈ្មោលឆ្មាញី សត្វឆ្មាទាំងពីរ រកឆីតែយប់ ដេកថ្ងៃស្ងៀមស្ងាត់ពួនក្នុងបន្ទប់ វាក្រោកពេលយប់ ដេញខាំកណ្តុរ សត្វនេះឯងអាចជាសត្វកំណាច ចិត្តវាជាចោរតែងលួចបំផ្លាញច្រឹបកាត់អាវខោ..
១៩_ជិញ្ជីងទុកថ្លឹង សម្រាប់អោយដឹង ទម្ងន់ប៉ុន្មាន បើគ្មានជញ្ជីងនោះនឹងលើកស្មាន ខូចការពុំខាន ពុំបានរាបស្មើ អ្នកប្រាជ្ញជាន់ចាស់ គេរាប់អានណាស់ ទុកជាប្រសើរ គេទុកជាផ្លូវ អោយចៅក្រមដើរ ចៅក្រមទុកប្រើ លុះដល់សព្វថ្ងៃ...
២០_ជួបជិតបានជាប់ បើចង់ក្តីគាប់ នឹងគ្រូអាចារ្យ កាន់ចិត្តស្លូតត្រង់ ហើយត្រូវឧស្សាហ៏ ព្យាយាមខាងការ រៀនសូត្រកុំខ្ចិល...
២១_ដែកឈូសត្រូវខ្នាត គេឈូសឈើស្អាតប្រដាប់ប្រដា សំរាប់ជាងឈើធ្វើស្អាតដោយសារ ជាងឈើត្រូវការ ពុំដែលខានឡើយ..
២២_សត្វឈ្លុសនេះណាឫកវាសង្ហា រូបប៉ុនសត្វឆ្កែ មានស្នែងវាខ្លី នៅព្រៃស្រុកខ្មែរ ពួកព្រានពូកែ ឈ្លុសចាញ់បានងាយ..
២៣_ញាតិញោមញញឹម ដោយមានសង្ឃឹមលើកូនជ្រះថ្លា ខាងផ្លូវរៀនសូត្រ ខិតខំឧស្សាហ៏ហេតុនោះមាតា បិតាអរណាស់..
២៤_ដើមដូងគេដាំ ធ្វើជាដំណាំផ្លែធ្វើអាហារ មានដាំដោយស្រុកនៅស្រែចំការ គេដាំដីណា ដែលមានដង្ហើមទឹក..
២៥_ដំរីធំណាស់ សត្វចេះអៀនខ្មាសជាជាងសត្វផង ចាញ់កលមនុស្សលោកមកជាប់ចំណង សង់ផ្ទះលើខ្នងជិះបានគ្រប់គ្នា..
២៦_ដង្កូវនាងណុកចេះធ្វើសំបុកបិទជិតអាត្មា ផាន់ចាស់រកឃើញចេះថេរក្សាចាស់មានប្រាជ្ញា
ដាក់មុងដេកចាំថ្នាក់ថ្នមពេកក្តាត់ដោយក្តីប្រយ័ត្នកុំអោយមុសកុំអោយវាក្ស័យសព្វថ្ងៃគេចាំស្រាវសូត្ររាល់ថ្ងៃធ្វើជាព្រៃហូល..
២៧_តាក់តែងជាច្បាប់ អោយក្មេងរៀនឆាប់សំរើបចិន្តា អោយមានពាក្យជួន ក្មេងតែងត្រូវការកើតក្តីជ្រះថ្លាឪឩស្សាហ៏រៀនសូត្រ..
២៨_ឮពាក្យចាស់ថា សត្វមានសាវតារ ជាសត្វអាក្រក់ តាវ៉ៅខ្លួនតូចវា់ហានលួចឆក់ចិត្តវាអាក្រក់លួចពងក្អែកឆី..
២៩_ថ្លាថ្លែងចែងការ ទុកអោយកុមា រិះរៀនជាច្បាប់ ចាស់ទុកជាច្បង អ្នកផងត្រងត្រាប់ចៀសក្តឩនអាប់ត្រូវខំរក្សា ខ្ពស់ឯងមារយាទចេះការពារជាតិដោយចេតនាពុំត្រូវអ្នកខ្ជិល រកសីធ្វើការ នឹងខំសិក្សាព្យាយាមជានិច្ច..
៣០_ធូរធារធនធានធ្វើជាអ្នកមានលុះដោយសារមារយាទ ចេះចាយសំចៃ សន្សំមួយជាតិស្មោះត្រង់ដល់ញាតិជិតខាងធម្មតា កាន់ឫកសុភាពដាក់ខ្លួនអោយទាបកាន់ចិត្តមេត្តាកាលមានបុណ្យង៉ាន រាប់អានស្នេហា ជួយដោយជ្រះថ្លាដរាបឥតខាន..
៣១_នំនៅពេញថាស ក្មេងចូលចិត្តណាស់ចំណីឆ្ងាញ់ឆ្ងុយ ជានុយកុមារ គុកអោយកូនណា ឩស្សាហ៏រៀនសូត្រ..
៣២_រូបនាគនេះណាមានក្នុងសាវតារព្រួសទឹកកើតភ្លើង ឃើញតែគំនូរគ្មាននាគស្រុកយើង ព្រួសទឹកកើតភ្លើងឃើញតាមសាវតារ យើងបានពិនិត្យចង់យកក្តីពិត ពុំបានច្បាស់ការណ៏ ព្រោះគ្មាននាគរស់នៅក្នុងលោកា មានតែសាវតារបុរាណសម័យ..
៣៣_ក្មេងច្រើនអាត្មា ពុំទាន់ដឹងការ ដែលក្មេងនៅល្ងង់ ឃើញសត្វប្រវឹក ហែលទឹកបំពង់ ក្មេងនៅឆោតល្ងង់ ច្រឡំសត្វទា..
៣៤_ពាក្យពិតរែងស្តែង បញ្ជោរនោះឯងគេតែងត្រូវការ មុនស្តីត្រូវគិតកុំជ្រុលវាចារើសរកពាក្យណាអោយល្មមសឹមស្តី កាចជ្រុលនឹងថ្លស់ ពោលពាក្យមិនស្មោះចំពោះប្រុសស្រី កាយវាចាចិត្តមិនដោយគប្បី នឹងអាប់សេរីដោយបាក្យទ្រគោះ ទោះខឹងក្តីណាត្រូវកាន់វាចាស្រទន់ពិរោះកុំឆាប់ក្រោធក្រាវ កុំឆាប់ប្រឈ្លោះ កុំពាក្យប្រជួស នាំអាប់ដល់ប្រាណ..
៣៥_ភរភូតអាក្រក់វាចាអាក្រក់ភូតចាញ់អាត្មា ថោកទាបអស្ចារ្យ ព្រោះពាក្យក្លែងក្លាយ ភុំភឿនភូមិភពបើនឹងសេពគប់ ត្រូវគិតវែងឆ្ងាយ មិត្តអប្បលក្ខណ៏ កុំអ្នកសហាយ កុំចង់សប្បាយ ប្រយ័ត្នថ្លស់ប្រាណ..
៣៦_មុខមាត់មាំមួនឫកពានឹមនួន កិរិយារម្យទម មារយាទហ្មត់ហ្មង អ្នកផងនិយម គាប់ចិត្តចាស់ទុំ ប្រសើរពេកក្តាត់,,
៣៧_រិះរករីករាយពុំត្រូវមើលងាយ និស្សិតឩស្សាហ៏ មុខរៀនខំខែង តែងកើតបញា ទុកជួយរក្សារដ្ឋាឯករាជ្យ..
៣៨_វក់វីរវឹកត្រូវក្រោកពីព្រឹករៀបចំខ្លួនប្រាណ ទៅរៀនសាលា ជាការចំណានបើក្មេងណាខាន ពុំបានរៀនក្តី ក្មេងនោះគ្មានយស កេរ្ត៏ពុំពិរោះឈ្មោះគ្មានឮល្បី ព្រោះគ្មានចំណេះ មិនចេះធ្វើអី ញាតិទាំងប្រុសស្រីពុំភក្តីឡើយ..
៣៩_ស្រណោះសាលា កាលខ្ញុំសិក្សាភ្លេចឃ្លានបាយទឹកដល់ពេលឈប់រៀន ទើបខ្ញុំភ្នកនឹកញ័រពោះគ្រឹកៗព្រោះឃ្លានអាហារ ខ្ញុំដើររហ័ស ព្រោះឃ្លានបាយណាស់ នឹកដល់មាតា លោកចាំមើលផ្លូវដោយក្តីស្នេហា ព្រមទាំងបិតាអង្គុយចាំបាយ..
៤០_ឡកឡើយច្រឡំច្រឡោតមិនសម ខ្លះថាចិត្តខ្លាំង ខ្លះថាចិត្តឈ្លើយ មិនចេះលាក់បាំង អាចហានប្រឆាំង នឹងអ្នកមានគុណ..
៤១_អំពិលអំពែក ទំមឹកឫស្សីក្មេងទាំងប្រុសស្រីព្រួតរៀនវិជ្ជា អំពិលអំពែក ទំមេកពុទ្រា យើងត្រូវព្រួតគ្នាទ្រទ្រង់សាសនា អំពិលអំពែក ទំមេកចម្ប៉ា ប្រឹងប្រែងអាត្មារក្សាឯករាជ..
៤២_ទុំលុះទុំលាយ សំពត់សំពាយ សំពៅសំពោង សំប៉ានសំប៉ែត អណ្តែតឃ្លេងឃ្លោង ចាប់ចងនែបនិត្យ ,សំពៅទៅមុខ សំប៉ានគេទុកប្រើការជិតៗ ចំឡងដូចស្ពាន អ្នកមានគំនិត សំប៉ានគេគិត ជំនួយសំពៅ បើចោលនឹងខាន មិនរាប់សំប៉ាន អាងបានទឹកជ្រៅ លុះដល់ទឹករាក់ អ្នកចង់ឆ្លងទៅ កាន់ទីលំនៅ ពិតពុំបានឡើយ..
៤៣_ហៃអស់កុមារ ប្រឹងគ្រប់អាត្មា កុំខិលកុំខូច ត្រូវខំរៀនសូត្រ ទាន់ខ្លួននៅតូច សម្រាំងសម្រួចចំណេះប្រាជ្ញា បើកូនណាខ្ជិល ពុំចង់រមិល ខាងផ្លូវសិក្សា រែងរងទុក្ខសោកដល់ចាស់ជរា ថយថោកមហិមានឹងប្រៀបពុំបាន ពេលនេះត្រូវខំ ត្រូវកូនសន្សំ ចំណេះចំណាន រៀនសូត្រត្រូវប្រុង ស្តាប់គ្រូអោយបានប្រដៅប៉ុន្មានចូរអានកុំភ្លេច
Gaining Independence
It is easy with hindsight to argue that French rule in Indochina came to an end in summer of 1945. this did not appear to be the case, however, to the new breed of French officials sent out by General de Gaulle's government to replace the people who had looked after the region up to 1945. De Gaulle ,in fact, had made the recovery of the French empire, and Indochina in particular,an important goal of his government in exile .
In Cambodia, the French were forced in October 1945 to make conciliatory gestures to the members of the indigenous elite whom they needed to run the Kingdom's day to day affairs, these were the people whose" awakening" the French had celebrated in the 1930s they had become patriots in the meantime and from the French point of view, intellectually belligerent .many of interpreted the summer of 1945 less as a humiliation of the French that had to be avenged than as a victory for the Cambodians themselves . Cambodia. They argued, needed to regain its independence ,A leading convert to the cause, although he was quieter than most, was the King Sihanouk .
The Colonial Rule and the Beginnings of Nationalism
The Bardez incident also offers us a glimpse of Cambodian peasants entering the historical record, before 1927, in fact, there were no Khmer language newspapers or journals in the Kingdom, and Cambodian literature, when it was printed at all, consisted almost entirely of Buddhist texts and nineteenth century verse epics, the first novel in Khmer, Tonle-Sap, was published in 1938, two years after the appearance of the first Khmer newspaper, Nagara Vatta ( Angkor-Wat) although these facts are not especially surprising in view of French inactivity in Cambodian education, they contrast sharply with the quantity of printed material produced in the Vietnamese components of Indochina, literacy in Khmer was almost entirely in the hands og the Buddhist Monkshood, before 1936, in fact the only Khmer language periodical, Kabuja Surya { Cambodian Sun } had been published on a monthly basis under the auspices of the French-Funded institute Bouddhique, with rare exceptions, the journal limited itself to printing folklore, Buddhist texts, and material concerned with the royal family even Cambodian chronicle histories in Khmer were not yet available in print.
The Assassination Of French Resident Bardez
In late 1923, the acting French resident in Prey-Veng, a vigorous and ambitious official named Felix Louis Bardez, reported his belief that there were three reasons why tax receipts were so low: the complete inactivity of Cambodian officials, the lack of the supervision ( over the officers expected to collect the taxes),and shortcomings in collection procedures,in the course of 1924, Bardez improved the procedures for tax collection in the Srok to the all eighteen categories of tax yielded more revenues than in 1923, he showed that the system could be made more productive by working harder himself, indeed, the two categories of tax in which revenues rose the most-rice taxes and Chinese head taxes were precisely those that could be increased by a vigorous resident on the spot, eager to expose the compromises, Doctored books, and ex-aggregations of local officials.
Bardez's success in Prey-Veng attracted the attention of his superiors,and in late 1924 he was transferred ahead of many more senior officials to be resident in Kompong-chhnang, long bedeviled by banditry and low tax revenues, Bardez's arrival coincided roughly with the promulgation of a supplementary tax to pay for the mountain resort of Bakor, but money was hard to come by, as Bardez admitted to a friend, and receipts were slow in coming, one Cambodian official trying to collect them was severely beaten by villagers in early 1925.
On April 18, angered by resorts that another village,Krang Laav, was delinquent in its payment. Bardez visited the village himself, accompanied by an interpreter and a Cambodian militiaman, summoning delinquent taxpayers to the village hall, or Sala, he had several of them handcuffed and threatened to take them to prison.even though they would not be subject to fines for their delinquency for three months, his refusal to let the prisoners have lunch while he was eating himself destroyed the patience of the large crowd of people looking on, who lacked food or shelter, in a confused melee,
Bardez and his companions were set upon by twenty or thirty people, within half an hour, Bardez interpreter, and the militiaman had been beaten to death with the chairs, fence paling, ax handles, and the militiaman's rifle butt, the corpses were then mutilated, soon afterward, incited by local leaders who were never brought to trail, seven hundred Cambodians, the crowd that had gathered to listen to Bardez- began marching on Kompong-chhnang to demand re-mission of their taxes, after a few hours, however, their fervor died down, and the marchers broke up or were dispersed by armed militia before they reached their destination.
The news of Bardez's murder shocked the French community in Phnompenh, largely because it was the first case in which villagers been killed a high-ranking French official on duty, other officials had been killed by bandits or by their servants, but none while collecting taxes, the precedent obviously was dramatic one, moving swiftly through their puppets in the royal family, the French saw to it that Sisowath sent his eldest son, Prince Monivong, to the area with a French political counselor to communicate his discontent, this took the form of a Royal ordinance changing the name of the village from Krang laav to direchan( Bestiality) the ordinance force the villagers to conduct expiatory
services for Bardez on the anniversary of his murder for the next ten years, the most interesting feature of the ordinance was its insistence on collective guilt, this was the line pursued by the defense in the trail of the eighteen men arrested for Bardez's murder, but it was dismissed by the prosecution, which saw danger in linking the murder with any kind of political discontent, interestingly, one of the men arrested for the murder was still alive in 1980, when he told an interviewer that " everyone in the village" had beaten Bardez and his companions.
The trail of the men accused of the murders opened in Phnompenh in December 1925 and was widely reported in the press, in which it was fitted into pattern of increasing anti colonial feeling elsewhere in Indochina, at the trail. the prosecution tried to prove that the defendants were "pirates" from outside the village and that robbery had been their motive in fact, although the taxes collected by Bardez disappeared in the melee, his own billfold was untouched, more to the point, his diary was confiscated by the prosecution and classified as confidential because of the "political" material it contained, testimony by several of Bardez's friends suggested that the diary may have recorded his pessimism about collecting any extra taxes, to one of them, he had remarked shortly before his death that there was simply not enough money in the Srok to meet the newly imposed demands ,high-ranking French officials interfered with witnesses for the defense, at one point , the defense attorney's tea was apparently poisoned by unknown hands, and a stenographer hired by by the defense was forced by her former employers to return to her job in Saigon what the French wanted to kept quiet, it seems was the fact that emerged at the trial. namely, that on a per ca-pita basis the Cambodian peasants paid the highest taxes in Indochina as a price for their " docility"
The Bardez incident resembles in 1916 affair and the 1942 Monks demonstration, discussed below, in that nothing like it had happened previously in the colonial era,it that exposed the mechanics of colonial rule and the unreality of French mythology about the peaceable" Cambodian character" one aspect of the widening distance between the French and the Cambodians was the fact that Bardez, after fifteen years of conscientious service in Cambodia, was still incapable of speaking Khmer , without knowing the language, how accurate could his assessments be of what ordinary people were thinking? it is as if a great deal of Cambodian life in the colonial period was carried out behind a screen, invisible and inaudible to the French, another French resident, writing at about this time, made a perceptive comment in this regard, it's permissible to ask if the unvarying calm which the [Cambodia] people continue to exhibit is not merely an external appearance covering up vague, unexpressed feeling[ emphasis added whose extract nature we can not perceive.
Residents would reply by saying that they were paid to administer the population, not to understand it, every month, they were required to complete mountains of paperwork, to sit for days as referees in often inconclusive legal case, and to supervise the extensive programs of public works, primarily roads, which the French used to perpetuate corvee' and to justify their presence in the Kingdom.
The end of The Assassination Of French Resident Bardez.
Bardez's success in Prey-Veng attracted the attention of his superiors,and in late 1924 he was transferred ahead of many more senior officials to be resident in Kompong-chhnang, long bedeviled by banditry and low tax revenues, Bardez's arrival coincided roughly with the promulgation of a supplementary tax to pay for the mountain resort of Bakor, but money was hard to come by, as Bardez admitted to a friend, and receipts were slow in coming, one Cambodian official trying to collect them was severely beaten by villagers in early 1925.
On April 18, angered by resorts that another village,Krang Laav, was delinquent in its payment. Bardez visited the village himself, accompanied by an interpreter and a Cambodian militiaman, summoning delinquent taxpayers to the village hall, or Sala, he had several of them handcuffed and threatened to take them to prison.even though they would not be subject to fines for their delinquency for three months, his refusal to let the prisoners have lunch while he was eating himself destroyed the patience of the large crowd of people looking on, who lacked food or shelter, in a confused melee,
Bardez and his companions were set upon by twenty or thirty people, within half an hour, Bardez interpreter, and the militiaman had been beaten to death with the chairs, fence paling, ax handles, and the militiaman's rifle butt, the corpses were then mutilated, soon afterward, incited by local leaders who were never brought to trail, seven hundred Cambodians, the crowd that had gathered to listen to Bardez- began marching on Kompong-chhnang to demand re-mission of their taxes, after a few hours, however, their fervor died down, and the marchers broke up or were dispersed by armed militia before they reached their destination.
The news of Bardez's murder shocked the French community in Phnompenh, largely because it was the first case in which villagers been killed a high-ranking French official on duty, other officials had been killed by bandits or by their servants, but none while collecting taxes, the precedent obviously was dramatic one, moving swiftly through their puppets in the royal family, the French saw to it that Sisowath sent his eldest son, Prince Monivong, to the area with a French political counselor to communicate his discontent, this took the form of a Royal ordinance changing the name of the village from Krang laav to direchan( Bestiality) the ordinance force the villagers to conduct expiatory
services for Bardez on the anniversary of his murder for the next ten years, the most interesting feature of the ordinance was its insistence on collective guilt, this was the line pursued by the defense in the trail of the eighteen men arrested for Bardez's murder, but it was dismissed by the prosecution, which saw danger in linking the murder with any kind of political discontent, interestingly, one of the men arrested for the murder was still alive in 1980, when he told an interviewer that " everyone in the village" had beaten Bardez and his companions.
The trail of the men accused of the murders opened in Phnompenh in December 1925 and was widely reported in the press, in which it was fitted into pattern of increasing anti colonial feeling elsewhere in Indochina, at the trail. the prosecution tried to prove that the defendants were "pirates" from outside the village and that robbery had been their motive in fact, although the taxes collected by Bardez disappeared in the melee, his own billfold was untouched, more to the point, his diary was confiscated by the prosecution and classified as confidential because of the "political" material it contained, testimony by several of Bardez's friends suggested that the diary may have recorded his pessimism about collecting any extra taxes, to one of them, he had remarked shortly before his death that there was simply not enough money in the Srok to meet the newly imposed demands ,high-ranking French officials interfered with witnesses for the defense, at one point , the defense attorney's tea was apparently poisoned by unknown hands, and a stenographer hired by by the defense was forced by her former employers to return to her job in Saigon what the French wanted to kept quiet, it seems was the fact that emerged at the trial. namely, that on a per ca-pita basis the Cambodian peasants paid the highest taxes in Indochina as a price for their " docility"
The Bardez incident resembles in 1916 affair and the 1942 Monks demonstration, discussed below, in that nothing like it had happened previously in the colonial era,it that exposed the mechanics of colonial rule and the unreality of French mythology about the peaceable" Cambodian character" one aspect of the widening distance between the French and the Cambodians was the fact that Bardez, after fifteen years of conscientious service in Cambodia, was still incapable of speaking Khmer , without knowing the language, how accurate could his assessments be of what ordinary people were thinking? it is as if a great deal of Cambodian life in the colonial period was carried out behind a screen, invisible and inaudible to the French, another French resident, writing at about this time, made a perceptive comment in this regard, it's permissible to ask if the unvarying calm which the [Cambodia] people continue to exhibit is not merely an external appearance covering up vague, unexpressed feeling[ emphasis added whose extract nature we can not perceive.
Residents would reply by saying that they were paid to administer the population, not to understand it, every month, they were required to complete mountains of paperwork, to sit for days as referees in often inconclusive legal case, and to supervise the extensive programs of public works, primarily roads, which the French used to perpetuate corvee' and to justify their presence in the Kingdom.
The end of The Assassination Of French Resident Bardez.
Cambodia's Response to France, 1916-1945
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
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
Sisowath's Early years
Norodom, like millions of people of his generation, was born in a village and died in a semi-modern city,graced at the time of his death with electricity and running water, the modernization of the edges and surfaces of his kingdom, however, spread very slowly, partly because communications inside Cambodia remained so poor, partly became monks, royalty, and officials- ie, the people held in most respect resisted institutional change, and partly because the " modernizing" segment of the Society was dominated by the French, aided by immigrants from China and Vietnam.the modernizers, interestingly, thought in Indochinese terms, or perhaps in capitalist ones, while members of the traditional elite saw no reason to widen their intellectual horizons or to tinker with their belief.
Norodom's death , nonetheless, was watershed in French involvement and in Cambodian Kingship as an institution, as the next three Kings of the country were handpicked by the French, until 1953, except for a few months in summer of 1945, Cambodian officials of high rank played a subordinate, ceremonial role, and those at lower levels of the administration were underpaid servants of colonial power, at no point in the chain of command was initiative rewarded while Norodom lived, the French encountered obstacles to their plans, efficient revenue - producing machine.
The change over the long term, easy to see from our perspective, was not immediately perceptible in the Srok, where French officials found old habits of patronage, dependence, violence, fatalism, and corruption largely unchanged from year to year, offices were still for sale, tax rolls were falsified, rice harvest were underestimated, credulous people were still ready to fellow sorcerers and mountebanks, as late as 1925, in Stung-Treng , an ex monk gathered a following by claiming to possess a golden frog with a human voice" and epidemics of malaria and cholera, the contrast between the capital and the Srok, therefore, sharpened in the early twentieth century, without apparently producing audible resentment in the Srok, even though peasants in the long run paid with their labor and their rice for all the improvements in Phnompenh and for the high salaries enjoyed by French officials , fueling the resentment of anti-French guerrillas in the early 1950s and communist cadres later on.
When Sisowath succeeded his brother in 1904, he was sixty-four years old, and ever since in the 1870s he had been an almost fawning collaborator with the French, he seems to have been a somewhat more fervent Buddhist than Norodom and more popular among ordinary people, some of whom associated him with the ceremonies that he had sponsored( and that they had paid for) rather than the taxes charged by his brother or by the French, according to one French writer, he was so frightened of his brother, even in death, that he refused to attend his cremation. the first two years of his Reign,according to the chronicle, were devoted largely to ceremonial observances and to bureaucratic innovation ( such as appointing an electrician for the Palace and enjoining officials to wear stocking and shoes in Western-style) on another occasion, Sisowath harangued visiting officials- probably at French insistence- about the persistence of slavery in the Srok, throughout the year, like all Cambodian King, he sponsored ceremonies meant to assure good harvests and rainfall , each year for the rest of his Reign, the French provided Sisowath( as they had Norodom) with an allowance of high grade opium, totaling 113kg(249 pound) per year.
This early stage of his Reign culminated in Norodom's cremation in 1906. which was followed almost immediately by Sisowath's coronation, for the first time in Cambodian history, the ceremony is described in detail in the chronicle( as well as by French sources) it lasted for several days , one of its interesting features was that the French governor-general of Indochina was entrusted with giving Sisowath his tiles and handing him his regalia, another was that Chaovay-Srok, summoned to the Palace for the occasion, solemnly pledged to the King" all rice land, vegetable fields, water, earth, forest and mountains, and the sacred boundaries of the great city, the Kingdom of Kampuchea.
Almost immediately after being crowned, Sisowath left Cambodia to visit the colonial Exhibition at Marseilles,in the company of Royal ballet troupe,his voyage is scrupulously recorded in the chronicle
which makes it sound like an episode in a Cambodian poem, the King's progress through Singapore, Ceylon, and Indian Ocean is recently set down, and so are gnomic comments about the sights farther on ( three-story building in Italy; the coastline of the red sea consisting of Nothing but sand and rock) at port said, people eagerly came" in Marseilles, when the King made a speech, all the French people who were present clapped their hands- men and women alike' the chronicle gives the impression that King decided to visit France , in fact, his visit was force on him by the requirement of the exposition officials that the Royal ballet perform from the French point of view , unofficially at least, this visit by an aged potentate and his harem told them what they already, knew" about his exotic, faintly comic little country.
After exchanging visits and dinners with the President of the republic and a trip to Nancy to observe" the 14th of July in a European way, the King returned to Cambodia, although the chronicle makes no mention of discussion of substantive matters, Sisowath's visit to Paris coincided with Franco Thai negotiation there that culminated, a few months later, in Siam's retro-cession to Cambodia of the Srok of Battambong and Siam-Reap, the trip received little publicity at home and is mentioned in French records from the Srok only in connection with a rumor that Sisowath had gone to France to plead with the French to legalize gambling in Cambodia.
The number of pages in Sisowath's chronicle devoted to the return of Battambong and Seam-reap suggests that the compilers, like the French, considered this to be most important event of the Reign,
even though the King had little to do with it beyond providing the resident Superior, in 1906, with a"History" of Thai occupation, the importance of the retro-cession was probably connected with the importance of that Angkor , and especially Angkorwat, retained for the Cambodian monarchy throughout Cambodia's dark ages in 1906, a copy of the Cambodian translation of sacred Buddhist writing, the Tripitaka, was deposited in a monastery on the grounds of Angkor-Wat, and for another sixty years Cambodian monarchs frequently visited the site and sponsored religious ceremonies there.
The retro-cession apparently was less painful to the Thai than the loss of the Lao states, which occurred at roughly the same time as we have seen, the Northwestern Srok had come under Thai control in 1794 in exchange for Thai permission for Eng to rule at Udong, over the next hundred years, except for a brief period in 1830s, the Thai had made little effort to colonize( or depopulate) the region, choosing to the govern it at most levels with ethnic Khmer, although they did nothing to restore the temples at Angkor, they left them intact, revenue from the two Srok- in stipulate amounts of cardamom and other forest products- was not especially high and the region was more defensible by water from Phnompenh than overland from Bangkok.
For these reasons, but primarily to avoid further friction along its border, the Thai decided in 1906 to cede the Srok to France, the final agreement was signed by the French and the Thai in April 1907, and the Srok came under French control toward the end of the year, Sisowath was not encouraged to visit the area, however, until 1909, for reasons that the chronicle fails to make clear.
And yet the King and his subjects were overjoyed at the restoration of Angkor, in the Tang-Kok ceremonies of Oct-1907, when officials traditionally offered gifts to monarch widely attended celebrations occurred throughout the Kingdom to "Thank the Angles"( Thevada) for the return of the Srok, and local officials assigned to region came to Phnompenh to pay homage to the King.
Over the next haft century, French scholars and Cambodian workers restored the temples at Angkor, in the long run, probably France's most valuable legacy to Cambodia, Battambang, especially in the 1920s. developed into the country's most prosperous Srok, providing the bulk of Cambodia's rice exports and sheltering, idiosyncratically, by far the greatest number of landlords in the country as well as the highest number of immigrants from elsewhere in Cambodia and from the Cambodian-speaking portions of Cochin-China.
By 1909, typewriters had been installed in all the residences, automobiles came into use on a national scale at about the same time, these two; Improvements" in French administration had several un-intentional effects, for one thing, the volume of reports required by residents, and consumed by their superiors in Phnompenh, Saigon, Hanoi, and Paris,increased dramatically,Residents, more than ever,were tied down to their offices,presiding over a two-way flow of paper, they were seldom in contact, socially or professionally, with the people they were intended to protect, in automobiles, tours of inspection became speedier and more superficial, for residents and their aides were confined to passable roads in fact, the intensification of French economic and political controls over Cambodia, noticeable throughout the 1920s and after, was accompanied, ironically, by the withdrawal of French officials from many levels of Cambodia life, the' Government" that a Cambodian peasant might encounter in these years was composed of minority of Cambodians they could prepare reports in French, and this interplay between Cambodian
and Vietnamese had important effects on the development of Cambodian nationalism.especially after World-War II.
The End of Sisowath's Early years
Norodom's death , nonetheless, was watershed in French involvement and in Cambodian Kingship as an institution, as the next three Kings of the country were handpicked by the French, until 1953, except for a few months in summer of 1945, Cambodian officials of high rank played a subordinate, ceremonial role, and those at lower levels of the administration were underpaid servants of colonial power, at no point in the chain of command was initiative rewarded while Norodom lived, the French encountered obstacles to their plans, efficient revenue - producing machine.
The change over the long term, easy to see from our perspective, was not immediately perceptible in the Srok, where French officials found old habits of patronage, dependence, violence, fatalism, and corruption largely unchanged from year to year, offices were still for sale, tax rolls were falsified, rice harvest were underestimated, credulous people were still ready to fellow sorcerers and mountebanks, as late as 1925, in Stung-Treng , an ex monk gathered a following by claiming to possess a golden frog with a human voice" and epidemics of malaria and cholera, the contrast between the capital and the Srok, therefore, sharpened in the early twentieth century, without apparently producing audible resentment in the Srok, even though peasants in the long run paid with their labor and their rice for all the improvements in Phnompenh and for the high salaries enjoyed by French officials , fueling the resentment of anti-French guerrillas in the early 1950s and communist cadres later on.
When Sisowath succeeded his brother in 1904, he was sixty-four years old, and ever since in the 1870s he had been an almost fawning collaborator with the French, he seems to have been a somewhat more fervent Buddhist than Norodom and more popular among ordinary people, some of whom associated him with the ceremonies that he had sponsored( and that they had paid for) rather than the taxes charged by his brother or by the French, according to one French writer, he was so frightened of his brother, even in death, that he refused to attend his cremation. the first two years of his Reign,according to the chronicle, were devoted largely to ceremonial observances and to bureaucratic innovation ( such as appointing an electrician for the Palace and enjoining officials to wear stocking and shoes in Western-style) on another occasion, Sisowath harangued visiting officials- probably at French insistence- about the persistence of slavery in the Srok, throughout the year, like all Cambodian King, he sponsored ceremonies meant to assure good harvests and rainfall , each year for the rest of his Reign, the French provided Sisowath( as they had Norodom) with an allowance of high grade opium, totaling 113kg(249 pound) per year.
This early stage of his Reign culminated in Norodom's cremation in 1906. which was followed almost immediately by Sisowath's coronation, for the first time in Cambodian history, the ceremony is described in detail in the chronicle( as well as by French sources) it lasted for several days , one of its interesting features was that the French governor-general of Indochina was entrusted with giving Sisowath his tiles and handing him his regalia, another was that Chaovay-Srok, summoned to the Palace for the occasion, solemnly pledged to the King" all rice land, vegetable fields, water, earth, forest and mountains, and the sacred boundaries of the great city, the Kingdom of Kampuchea.
Almost immediately after being crowned, Sisowath left Cambodia to visit the colonial Exhibition at Marseilles,in the company of Royal ballet troupe,his voyage is scrupulously recorded in the chronicle
which makes it sound like an episode in a Cambodian poem, the King's progress through Singapore, Ceylon, and Indian Ocean is recently set down, and so are gnomic comments about the sights farther on ( three-story building in Italy; the coastline of the red sea consisting of Nothing but sand and rock) at port said, people eagerly came" in Marseilles, when the King made a speech, all the French people who were present clapped their hands- men and women alike' the chronicle gives the impression that King decided to visit France , in fact, his visit was force on him by the requirement of the exposition officials that the Royal ballet perform from the French point of view , unofficially at least, this visit by an aged potentate and his harem told them what they already, knew" about his exotic, faintly comic little country.
After exchanging visits and dinners with the President of the republic and a trip to Nancy to observe" the 14th of July in a European way, the King returned to Cambodia, although the chronicle makes no mention of discussion of substantive matters, Sisowath's visit to Paris coincided with Franco Thai negotiation there that culminated, a few months later, in Siam's retro-cession to Cambodia of the Srok of Battambong and Siam-Reap, the trip received little publicity at home and is mentioned in French records from the Srok only in connection with a rumor that Sisowath had gone to France to plead with the French to legalize gambling in Cambodia.
The number of pages in Sisowath's chronicle devoted to the return of Battambong and Seam-reap suggests that the compilers, like the French, considered this to be most important event of the Reign,
even though the King had little to do with it beyond providing the resident Superior, in 1906, with a"History" of Thai occupation, the importance of the retro-cession was probably connected with the importance of that Angkor , and especially Angkorwat, retained for the Cambodian monarchy throughout Cambodia's dark ages in 1906, a copy of the Cambodian translation of sacred Buddhist writing, the Tripitaka, was deposited in a monastery on the grounds of Angkor-Wat, and for another sixty years Cambodian monarchs frequently visited the site and sponsored religious ceremonies there.
The retro-cession apparently was less painful to the Thai than the loss of the Lao states, which occurred at roughly the same time as we have seen, the Northwestern Srok had come under Thai control in 1794 in exchange for Thai permission for Eng to rule at Udong, over the next hundred years, except for a brief period in 1830s, the Thai had made little effort to colonize( or depopulate) the region, choosing to the govern it at most levels with ethnic Khmer, although they did nothing to restore the temples at Angkor, they left them intact, revenue from the two Srok- in stipulate amounts of cardamom and other forest products- was not especially high and the region was more defensible by water from Phnompenh than overland from Bangkok.
For these reasons, but primarily to avoid further friction along its border, the Thai decided in 1906 to cede the Srok to France, the final agreement was signed by the French and the Thai in April 1907, and the Srok came under French control toward the end of the year, Sisowath was not encouraged to visit the area, however, until 1909, for reasons that the chronicle fails to make clear.
And yet the King and his subjects were overjoyed at the restoration of Angkor, in the Tang-Kok ceremonies of Oct-1907, when officials traditionally offered gifts to monarch widely attended celebrations occurred throughout the Kingdom to "Thank the Angles"( Thevada) for the return of the Srok, and local officials assigned to region came to Phnompenh to pay homage to the King.
Over the next haft century, French scholars and Cambodian workers restored the temples at Angkor, in the long run, probably France's most valuable legacy to Cambodia, Battambang, especially in the 1920s. developed into the country's most prosperous Srok, providing the bulk of Cambodia's rice exports and sheltering, idiosyncratically, by far the greatest number of landlords in the country as well as the highest number of immigrants from elsewhere in Cambodia and from the Cambodian-speaking portions of Cochin-China.
By 1909, typewriters had been installed in all the residences, automobiles came into use on a national scale at about the same time, these two; Improvements" in French administration had several un-intentional effects, for one thing, the volume of reports required by residents, and consumed by their superiors in Phnompenh, Saigon, Hanoi, and Paris,increased dramatically,Residents, more than ever,were tied down to their offices,presiding over a two-way flow of paper, they were seldom in contact, socially or professionally, with the people they were intended to protect, in automobiles, tours of inspection became speedier and more superficial, for residents and their aides were confined to passable roads in fact, the intensification of French economic and political controls over Cambodia, noticeable throughout the 1920s and after, was accompanied, ironically, by the withdrawal of French officials from many levels of Cambodia life, the' Government" that a Cambodian peasant might encounter in these years was composed of minority of Cambodians they could prepare reports in French, and this interplay between Cambodian
and Vietnamese had important effects on the development of Cambodian nationalism.especially after World-War II.
The End of Sisowath's Early years
The Tightening of French Control Cambodia
Within the Palace, Norodom governed in what the French considered to be an arbitrary ,authoritarian way, the French, however, offered him no alternative style, and throughout his Reign, Norodom was drawn less by the idea of a sound administration than by the imperatives of personal survival, revolts against his rule ( and implicitly against his acquiescence to the French) broke out in 1866 and 1870s, both attracted considerable support, able both were put down with difficulty by the French, unwilling to blame themselves for this state of affairs, the French blamed Norodom and were increasingly drawn to support his half-brother, Sisowath, who had led troops alongside the French in both rebellions.
Under French pressure, while another half-brother, Sivotha, was in revolt against him, Norodom agreed in 1870 to promulgate a series of reforms, although these were never carried out, they are worth noting as precursors of more extensive French control and as indications of areas of french concern, the reforms sought to dismantle royal involvement in land ownership, to reduce the numbers of Oknha, to rationalize tax collection, and to abolish slavery, had they been enacted, they would have worn away the power bases of the Cambodan elite, what the French disliked, as Minh Mang had in the 1830s, was the Cambodian way of doing things, which interfered with their ideas of rational, centralized control, institutions like slavery and absolute monarchy, moreover, went down poorly with officials of the third Republic, less charmed by the romantic operetta aspects of Cambodia than Napoleon III and his entourage had been.
In the early 1880s, as the French tightened their grip on Vietnam, it was only a matter of time before they solved Cambodia's problems, and imposed their will on the Cambodian court, the comedy in Phnompenh had gone on too long and had cost too much, the Cambodians had not seen the importance of paying for French protection, the French became impatient and assumed for this reason that time was running out, the "riches" of Cambodian remained untapped, what had seemed exotic and quaint in Cambodian Society in the 1860s, and 1870s was now seen by a new generation of officials as oppressive, it was time for protection to became control.
In 1884, the French succeeded in getting Norodom to agree to siphon off customs duties, especially on exports, to pay for French administrative costs, Norodom sent a cable to the President of French protesting against French pressure and was chided for doing so by the governor-general of Cochin China, Charles Thomson, who had been negotiating secretly with Sisowath to arrange a transfer of power should Norodom prove resistant to the reform.
The blow fell a few months later when Thomson sailed from Saigon to Phnompenh and confronted Norodom with a wide- ranking set of reforms encased in treaty that went much further than previous documents to establish de jure French control. Thomson arrived at the Palace with the treaty, traveling aboard a gunboat that was anchored within sight, as Norodom reviewed the document, Thomson's armed body guards stood nearby ,aided by a complaisant interpreter, Son Diep,
who rose to bureaucratic heights after Norodom's death, the King signed it because he saw that doing so we the only way to stay on the throne, he undoubtedly knew of Sisowath's machinations, perhaps he thought that the document's provisions would dissolve, when the French encountered opposition to them among the Cambodian elite, this is, in fact, what happened almost at once. but Article 2 of the treaty nevertheless marked a substantial intensification of French control' His majesty the Kingdom of Cambodia ( It read) accepts all the administrative, judicial, financial and commercial reforms which the French government shall judge, in future, useful to make their protectorate successful.
It was not this provision,however that enraged the Cambodian elite,who by this time probably saw Norodom as a French puppet in any case, the features that they saw as revolutionary ( and that the French saw as crucial to their program of reforms) were those that placed French residents in provincial cities, abolished, slavery,and institutionalized the ownership of land. these provisions, of course, struck at the heart of traditional Cambodian politics, which were built up out of entourages, exploitation ការគេងប្រវ័ញ្ច of labor,and the Taxation of harvests (rather than land) for benefit of the elite, who were now to become paid servants of the French administering rather than " consuming" the people under their control.
Although few French officials had troubled themselves with studying the nuance ភាពលាំគ្នា of slavery in Cambodia, and although their motives for abolishing it may have included a cynical attempt to disarm political opposition in France to their other reforms,it is clear that the institutionalization of servitude was more crucial reform, in Cambodian terms, than the placement of few French officials in the countryside to oversee the Cambodian elite, without this reform, the French could not claim to be acting on behalf of ordinary people, and more important, they could nothing to curb the power of elite, which sprang from control over personal , without abolishing slavery, moreover, the French could not proceed with their vision- however misguided it may have been-of a liberated Cambodian yeomanry ពួកម្ចាស់ដីធ្លី responding rationally to market pressures.
By cutting the ties that bound master and servants- or more precisely, by saying that this was what they hoped to do- the French were able to justify their interference at every level of Cambodia life, their proposal effectively cut the King off from his entourage and this entourage, in turn, from its followers, what the French wanted to administer in Cambodia was ,in fact, an extension of Vietnam. with communal officials responding directly to the French, even though government of this sort and at this level was foreign to Cambodia, where no commercial traditions -had they ever existed- had survived into the nineteenth century.
In the short run, the Cambodian reaction to the treaty was intense and costly to the French, in early 1885. a nationwide rebellion, under several leaders, broke out at various points, it last a year and a half, tying down some four thousand French and Vietnamese troops at a time when French resource were stretched thin in Indochina, unwilling to work through Norodom, who they suspected of supporting the rebellion, the French relied increasingly on Sisowath, allowing him a free hand in pointing pro- French officials in the Srok and thereby further undermining Norodom's authority. it seems likely that Sisowath expected to be rewarded with the throne while the Norodom was still a live, but as revolt wore on, the French found that they had to turn back to Norodom to pacify the rebels, in June 1886, the King proclaimed that if the rebels laid down their arms, the French would continue to respect Cambodian customs and laws- in other words, the mixture as before, the rebellion taught the French to be cautious, but their goals remained the same, namely, the rationalization of Cambodian government and control over the economy of the Kingdom, it was at this stage that the French began to surround Norodom with Cambodian advisers who were loyal to them rather than to the throne, these were drawn, in large part, from the small corps of interpreters trained under the French in the 1870s, the most notable of them, a Seno- Khmer named Tionn.
was to play an important role in Cambodian politics for more than fifty years.
The issue at stake in the rebellion, as Norodom's chronicle points out, was that the "Cambodian people (were) fond of their own leaders" especially because alternatives to them were so uncertain. a French writer in the 1930s blamed the French for their hastiness in trying to impose" equality,property,and(an) electorate" for Cambodians were supposed to choose their own village leaders under an article of the treaty, he added that is fact, the masters wanted to keep their slaves and the slaves their masters" people clung to the status quo.
Faced with the possibility of drawn out war, the French stepped back from their proposed reforms, and although the treaty was ratified 1886, most of its provision did not come into effect for nearly twenty years after Norodom dead.
At the same time, it would be wrong to exaggerate និយាយបំផ្លើស the Cambodian seen " Victory " or to agree with some recent Cambodian writers who have seen the rebellion as a watershed of Cambodian nationalism. with Norodom cast as a courageous patriot cleverly opposing French control,the evidence for these assertions is ambiguous.Norodom, after all accepted French protection in general way out but attacked it when he thought his own interests-especially financial ones-were at stake, there is a little evidence that he viewed his people as anything other than objects to consume, and certainly the French distrusted him more after 188, they spend the rest of his Reign reducing his privileges and independence, but it would be incorrect to endow Norodom or the rebellious Oknha with systematic ideas about the Cambodian nation ( as opposed to particular, personal relationship).
With hindsight, we can perceive two important lesson of the rebellion one was that the regional elite, despite French intervention in Cambodia, was still able to organize sizable and efficient guerrilla force, as it had done against the Thai 1834 and the Vietnamese 1841 it was to do again in the more peaceable"1916 affaira' discussed in the period the second lesson was that guerrilla troops, especially when supported by much of population, could hold a colonial army at bay.
![Doumer, Paul [Credit: H. Roger-Viollet]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_t1OgEW3OPcf4JgvDNZ6UyCO_nGzRQcl1o2tE20zKlw3cr_WGW3hlGJOo8_kB18b_E2h8HwgsQmcqB_epsLfTRqWYRA982iLftW2kCNcYYhetK5rX1e4rzHQLwN4poLMCj27rjKY3A=s0-d)
The next ten years of Norodom's Reign saw an inexorable increase in French control, with policies changing from(ones) of sentiment,,to a more egotistic, more personal policy of colonial expansion, all that stood in the way of French was the fact that Norodom still made the laws, appointed the officials, and controlled the national economy by farming out sources of revenue( such as the opium monopoly ឯកាធិជន and gambling concession,) by demanding gifts from his officials and by refusing to pay his bills, by 1892, however, the collection of direct taxes had come under French control, two years latter, there were ten French residence in the Srok, the 1890s, saw increasing French consolidation throughout Indochina, culminating in the Governor- Generalship of Paul Doumer (1897-1902).
In Cambodia, this consolidation involved tinkering with fiscal procedures and favoring Sisowat rather than any of Norodom's children as the successor to the throne, French officials were eager for Norodom relinquish control but were frightened by the independent- mindedness of many of his sons
one of whom was exiled to Algeria in 1893 for anti colonial agitation King's health was poor in any case and was made worse by his addition to opium, which the French provided him,in ornamental boxes, free of charge, as french officials grew more impatient with Norodom and as he weakened, they became abusive, after all, there were fortunes to be made by colonist inn Cambodia, or so the thought, and Norodom barred the way , the climax came in1897, when the resident Superior, Huynh De Vernevile, cable Paris that the King was incapable of ruling the country De vernevile asked to be granted executive authority instead, Paris concurred, the resident was now free to issue royal decrees appoint officials , and collect indirect taxes, as Milton Osborn has pointed out, high-ranking Cambodian officials ,previously dependent on Norodom's approval. were quick to sense a shift in the balance of power by the end of the year, the King's advice-even though he had now regained his seal and de Vernville had been dismissed- was heeded only as a matter of form, the new resident Superior was in command, answerable to authorities in Saigon, Paris, and Hanoi.
In the mean time, long-postponed royal decrees- such as on allowing French citizens to purchase land had product ed a real estate boom in Phnompenh, the effect of the reforms in the Srok, as far as we can tell, was less far-reaching, throughout the 1890s, French residents complained officially about torpor, corruption, and timidity among local officials , although one of them.sensing the tune he was now expected to play. reported to hid French superiors that ' the population of all the villages in my province is happy, ( the people) have not even the slightest complaint about the measures that have been taken" the Cambodian countryside, however, as many French officials complained, what the thought, or who held tiles to land, although slavery had been abolished, millenarian leaders occasionally gathered credulous followers and led them into revolt, gangs of bandits roamed were handy secure than they had ever been.
And yet high- ranking French officials still saw their role in the country in terms of a " civilizing mission " and of rationalizing their relationship with the court, in the countryside, ironically, Sisowath was more popular than Norodom, partly because the people had seen him more often,on ceremonial occasions, and partly because Norodom's rule had been so rapacious and unjust, Sisowath, in fact, looked on approvingly at developments in the 1890s, and by 1897 or so he had been formally promised the throne by French officials.
Norodom took seven more years to die, the last years of his Reign were marked by scandal involving his favorite son, Prince Yukanthor, who sought to publicize French injustice in Cambodia when he was in France by hiring a French journalist to press his case with French officials paid slight attention
except to take offense,Yukantor's accusations were largely true, if perhaps too zealous and wide ranking, as when he declared to the people of France " you have created property ( in Cambodia) and thus you have created the poor.
Officials in Paris persuaded Norodom by cable to demand an apology from his son ,it never came, for Yukanthor preferred to remain in exile, he died in Bangkok in 1934 and until then was viewed by French colonial officials with slight, but unjustified,apprehension.
The two last prerogatives that Norodom surrendered to be French were the authority to select his close advisers and the right to farm out gambling concessions to Chinese businessmen in Phnompenh, little by little, the French encroached on his freedom of action. Osborne has recorded the battles that Norodom lost, but the last pages of the royal chronicle (compiled during the Reign of Sisowath's son, King Monivong in the 1930s) say almost nothing about the confrontation, leaving the impression that the Reign was moving peacefully toward its close.
End of the Tightening of French Control Cambodia
Under French pressure, while another half-brother, Sivotha, was in revolt against him, Norodom agreed in 1870 to promulgate a series of reforms, although these were never carried out, they are worth noting as precursors of more extensive French control and as indications of areas of french concern, the reforms sought to dismantle royal involvement in land ownership, to reduce the numbers of Oknha, to rationalize tax collection, and to abolish slavery, had they been enacted, they would have worn away the power bases of the Cambodan elite, what the French disliked, as Minh Mang had in the 1830s, was the Cambodian way of doing things, which interfered with their ideas of rational, centralized control, institutions like slavery and absolute monarchy, moreover, went down poorly with officials of the third Republic, less charmed by the romantic operetta aspects of Cambodia than Napoleon III and his entourage had been.In the early 1880s, as the French tightened their grip on Vietnam, it was only a matter of time before they solved Cambodia's problems, and imposed their will on the Cambodian court, the comedy in Phnompenh had gone on too long and had cost too much, the Cambodians had not seen the importance of paying for French protection, the French became impatient and assumed for this reason that time was running out, the "riches" of Cambodian remained untapped, what had seemed exotic and quaint in Cambodian Society in the 1860s, and 1870s was now seen by a new generation of officials as oppressive, it was time for protection to became control.
In 1884, the French succeeded in getting Norodom to agree to siphon off customs duties, especially on exports, to pay for French administrative costs, Norodom sent a cable to the President of French protesting against French pressure and was chided for doing so by the governor-general of Cochin China, Charles Thomson, who had been negotiating secretly with Sisowath to arrange a transfer of power should Norodom prove resistant to the reform.The blow fell a few months later when Thomson sailed from Saigon to Phnompenh and confronted Norodom with a wide- ranking set of reforms encased in treaty that went much further than previous documents to establish de jure French control. Thomson arrived at the Palace with the treaty, traveling aboard a gunboat that was anchored within sight, as Norodom reviewed the document, Thomson's armed body guards stood nearby ,aided by a complaisant interpreter, Son Diep,
It was not this provision,however that enraged the Cambodian elite,who by this time probably saw Norodom as a French puppet in any case, the features that they saw as revolutionary ( and that the French saw as crucial to their program of reforms) were those that placed French residents in provincial cities, abolished, slavery,and institutionalized the ownership of land. these provisions, of course, struck at the heart of traditional Cambodian politics, which were built up out of entourages, exploitation ការគេងប្រវ័ញ្ច of labor,and the Taxation of harvests (rather than land) for benefit of the elite, who were now to become paid servants of the French administering rather than " consuming" the people under their control.
Although few French officials had troubled themselves with studying the nuance ភាពលាំគ្នា of slavery in Cambodia, and although their motives for abolishing it may have included a cynical attempt to disarm political opposition in France to their other reforms,it is clear that the institutionalization of servitude was more crucial reform, in Cambodian terms, than the placement of few French officials in the countryside to oversee the Cambodian elite, without this reform, the French could not claim to be acting on behalf of ordinary people, and more important, they could nothing to curb the power of elite, which sprang from control over personal , without abolishing slavery, moreover, the French could not proceed with their vision- however misguided it may have been-of a liberated Cambodian yeomanry ពួកម្ចាស់ដីធ្លី responding rationally to market pressures.
By cutting the ties that bound master and servants- or more precisely, by saying that this was what they hoped to do- the French were able to justify their interference at every level of Cambodia life, their proposal effectively cut the King off from his entourage and this entourage, in turn, from its followers, what the French wanted to administer in Cambodia was ,in fact, an extension of Vietnam. with communal officials responding directly to the French, even though government of this sort and at this level was foreign to Cambodia, where no commercial traditions -had they ever existed- had survived into the nineteenth century.
In the short run, the Cambodian reaction to the treaty was intense and costly to the French, in early 1885. a nationwide rebellion, under several leaders, broke out at various points, it last a year and a half, tying down some four thousand French and Vietnamese troops at a time when French resource were stretched thin in Indochina, unwilling to work through Norodom, who they suspected of supporting the rebellion, the French relied increasingly on Sisowath, allowing him a free hand in pointing pro- French officials in the Srok and thereby further undermining Norodom's authority. it seems likely that Sisowath expected to be rewarded with the throne while the Norodom was still a live, but as revolt wore on, the French found that they had to turn back to Norodom to pacify the rebels, in June 1886, the King proclaimed that if the rebels laid down their arms, the French would continue to respect Cambodian customs and laws- in other words, the mixture as before, the rebellion taught the French to be cautious, but their goals remained the same, namely, the rationalization of Cambodian government and control over the economy of the Kingdom, it was at this stage that the French began to surround Norodom with Cambodian advisers who were loyal to them rather than to the throne, these were drawn, in large part, from the small corps of interpreters trained under the French in the 1870s, the most notable of them, a Seno- Khmer named Tionn.
was to play an important role in Cambodian politics for more than fifty years.
The issue at stake in the rebellion, as Norodom's chronicle points out, was that the "Cambodian people (were) fond of their own leaders" especially because alternatives to them were so uncertain. a French writer in the 1930s blamed the French for their hastiness in trying to impose" equality,property,and(an) electorate" for Cambodians were supposed to choose their own village leaders under an article of the treaty, he added that is fact, the masters wanted to keep their slaves and the slaves their masters" people clung to the status quo.
Faced with the possibility of drawn out war, the French stepped back from their proposed reforms, and although the treaty was ratified 1886, most of its provision did not come into effect for nearly twenty years after Norodom dead.
At the same time, it would be wrong to exaggerate និយាយបំផ្លើស the Cambodian seen " Victory " or to agree with some recent Cambodian writers who have seen the rebellion as a watershed of Cambodian nationalism. with Norodom cast as a courageous patriot cleverly opposing French control,the evidence for these assertions is ambiguous.Norodom, after all accepted French protection in general way out but attacked it when he thought his own interests-especially financial ones-were at stake, there is a little evidence that he viewed his people as anything other than objects to consume, and certainly the French distrusted him more after 188, they spend the rest of his Reign reducing his privileges and independence, but it would be incorrect to endow Norodom or the rebellious Oknha with systematic ideas about the Cambodian nation ( as opposed to particular, personal relationship).
With hindsight, we can perceive two important lesson of the rebellion one was that the regional elite, despite French intervention in Cambodia, was still able to organize sizable and efficient guerrilla force, as it had done against the Thai 1834 and the Vietnamese 1841 it was to do again in the more peaceable"1916 affaira' discussed in the period the second lesson was that guerrilla troops, especially when supported by much of population, could hold a colonial army at bay.
![Doumer, Paul [Credit: H. Roger-Viollet]](http://media-1.web.britannica.com/eb-media/60/12260-003-06827A5E.jpg)
The next ten years of Norodom's Reign saw an inexorable increase in French control, with policies changing from(ones) of sentiment,,to a more egotistic, more personal policy of colonial expansion, all that stood in the way of French was the fact that Norodom still made the laws, appointed the officials, and controlled the national economy by farming out sources of revenue( such as the opium monopoly ឯកាធិជន and gambling concession,) by demanding gifts from his officials and by refusing to pay his bills, by 1892, however, the collection of direct taxes had come under French control, two years latter, there were ten French residence in the Srok, the 1890s, saw increasing French consolidation throughout Indochina, culminating in the Governor- Generalship of Paul Doumer (1897-1902). In Cambodia, this consolidation involved tinkering with fiscal procedures and favoring Sisowat rather than any of Norodom's children as the successor to the throne, French officials were eager for Norodom relinquish control but were frightened by the independent- mindedness of many of his sons
one of whom was exiled to Algeria in 1893 for anti colonial agitation King's health was poor in any case and was made worse by his addition to opium, which the French provided him,in ornamental boxes, free of charge, as french officials grew more impatient with Norodom and as he weakened, they became abusive, after all, there were fortunes to be made by colonist inn Cambodia, or so the thought, and Norodom barred the way , the climax came in1897, when the resident Superior, Huynh De Vernevile, cable Paris that the King was incapable of ruling the country De vernevile asked to be granted executive authority instead, Paris concurred, the resident was now free to issue royal decrees appoint officials , and collect indirect taxes, as Milton Osborn has pointed out, high-ranking Cambodian officials ,previously dependent on Norodom's approval. were quick to sense a shift in the balance of power by the end of the year, the King's advice-even though he had now regained his seal and de Vernville had been dismissed- was heeded only as a matter of form, the new resident Superior was in command, answerable to authorities in Saigon, Paris, and Hanoi.
In the mean time, long-postponed royal decrees- such as on allowing French citizens to purchase land had product ed a real estate boom in Phnompenh, the effect of the reforms in the Srok, as far as we can tell, was less far-reaching, throughout the 1890s, French residents complained officially about torpor, corruption, and timidity among local officials , although one of them.sensing the tune he was now expected to play. reported to hid French superiors that ' the population of all the villages in my province is happy, ( the people) have not even the slightest complaint about the measures that have been taken" the Cambodian countryside, however, as many French officials complained, what the thought, or who held tiles to land, although slavery had been abolished, millenarian leaders occasionally gathered credulous followers and led them into revolt, gangs of bandits roamed were handy secure than they had ever been.
And yet high- ranking French officials still saw their role in the country in terms of a " civilizing mission " and of rationalizing their relationship with the court, in the countryside, ironically, Sisowath was more popular than Norodom, partly because the people had seen him more often,on ceremonial occasions, and partly because Norodom's rule had been so rapacious and unjust, Sisowath, in fact, looked on approvingly at developments in the 1890s, and by 1897 or so he had been formally promised the throne by French officials.
Norodom took seven more years to die, the last years of his Reign were marked by scandal involving his favorite son, Prince Yukanthor, who sought to publicize French injustice in Cambodia when he was in France by hiring a French journalist to press his case with French officials paid slight attention
except to take offense,Yukantor's accusations were largely true, if perhaps too zealous and wide ranking, as when he declared to the people of France " you have created property ( in Cambodia) and thus you have created the poor.
Officials in Paris persuaded Norodom by cable to demand an apology from his son ,it never came, for Yukanthor preferred to remain in exile, he died in Bangkok in 1934 and until then was viewed by French colonial officials with slight, but unjustified,apprehension.
The two last prerogatives that Norodom surrendered to be French were the authority to select his close advisers and the right to farm out gambling concessions to Chinese businessmen in Phnompenh, little by little, the French encroached on his freedom of action. Osborne has recorded the battles that Norodom lost, but the last pages of the royal chronicle (compiled during the Reign of Sisowath's son, King Monivong in the 1930s) say almost nothing about the confrontation, leaving the impression that the Reign was moving peacefully toward its close.
End of the Tightening of French Control Cambodia
The Establishment of the French Protectorate Cambodia
The beginning of French involvement in Cambodia are to be found in eighteenth century, when missionaries took up residence in the Kingdom, especially in the vicinity of Udong, involvement did not become political, however, before the 1850s, coincidentally with French involvement in Vietnam in the mid-1850s, King Duang sought French support in an attempt to play off the Thai against the Vietnamese, but the French diplomatic mission to Cambodian 1856, armed with draft treaty of cooperation, failed to reach the Cambodian court, which was frightened away from welcoming it by the Thai political advisers, the draft treaty,incidentally, contained several clauses that passed into the operative one concluded in 1863, the French wanted teak for shipbuilding, for example, freedom to move about the country, and freedom to proselytize for the Roman Catholic faith.
French interest in Cambodia deepened with its involvement in Vietnam also after a French naturalist, Henri Muohot (1826-1861), Visited Duang's court and then proceeded to Seam-Reap, where he" discovered" the ruins of Angkok, Mouhot suggested in a book about his travels that Cambodia was exceptionally rich and that its rulers were neglecting their patrimony, Duang's openness to Hout and and other European visitors in this period stemmed in part of from his friendship with a French missionary, Monseigneur Jean claude Miche, whose mission headquarters was located near Udong and who had actively supported the 1856 diplomatic mission, Miche persuaded the King that there could be advantages in being free from Thai control and Vietnamese threats, in the last two years of his Reign, moreover, Duang saw French expansion into Vietnam as an opportunity for him to regain territory that Cambodia had lost to the Vietnamese over the preceding two hundred years.
Bogged down in guerrilla warfare in Vietnam, and unsure of support from Paris, the French administrators in Saigon were slow to respond to Cambodia's assertions of friendship, the matter lapsed when Duang Died in 1860 and Cambodia was plunged into series of civil wars, Duang's designated heir, Norodom, was unpopular in Eastern Srok and among Cham dissidents, who had almost captured Udong while Duang was alive, Norodom had spent much of his youth as a hostage at the Thai court, unable to rule, he fled Cambodia in 1861, returning with Thai support at the end of the following year, but he returned on a probationary basis, for his regalia remained in Bangkok, angered by Thai interference, and attracted by French promises of gifts, Norodom re-opened negotiations with French, according to a contemporary, the French admiral in charge of South-Vietnam, having no immediate war to fight, looked for a peaceful conquest and began dreaming about Cambodia.
The colonial era began without a shot and in a very tentative way,a delegation of French naval officers concluded a treaty with Norodom in Udong in August 1863, offering him protection at the hands of a French resident in exchange for timber concessions and mineral exploration right, Norodom managed to keep the treaty secret from his Thai advisers for several months, when they found out about it and notified Bangkok, he quickly reasserted his dependence on the Thai King, declaring to his advisers that" I desire to remain( the Thai King) servant, for his glory, until the end of my life, no change ever occurs in my heart" the Thai, in turn, kept Norodom's, change of heart a secret from the French, who learned of it only after his early declaration of faith had been ratified in Paris in early 1864.
What Norodom wanted from the French Vis-a' Vis the Thai is unclear, he seems to have been playing for time,and the method he shose resembled that of his uncle, King Chan, with French in the role of
the Vietnamese, he wanted to be crowned, and by the middle of 1864, the Thai and the French had agreed to cosponsor his coronation, the unintentionally comical aspects of the ceremony are re-counted by several French source, Thai and french officials quarreled about precedent,protocol, and regalia while Norodom, using time-honored filial imagery proclaimed his dependence on both courts, for the last time, the Cambodian King's title were chosen and transmitted by Bangkok, for the last time,too, The Cambodian King claimed to draw legitimacy from two foreign courts, for the first time, a Cambodian King accepted his crown from a European, the next three Cambodian monarch followed suit , from this point on, Thai influence in Cambodian began to wane fading even more sharply and more or less for good after King Mongkut's or ( Rama IV ) death in 1867.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mongkut_in_the_Sangha.jpeg
The imposition of French protection over Cambodia did not end the dynastic and millenarian rebellion that had plagued the earlier years of Norodom's Reign, although French military force were helpful in quelling these rebellions by 1867, the most important of these was led by Pou Kombo ពោកំបោរ, an ex-monk who claimed that he had better right than Norodom to be King, a year before, Norodom had shifted his Palace to Phnompenh, he had been urged to do so by French, just as Chan had been encouraged to move by the Vietnamese earlier in the century, and for similar tactical reasons, in the French case,commercial motives were also at work, for Phnompenh was more accessible from Saigon than an inland capital would have been, and it was hoped that the exploration of the Mekong river under commandant E,Doudart de lagree'( 1823-1868)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ernest_Doudart_de_Lagree.jpg
would result in Data about the river's Northern reaches that would justify French pipe dreams of Phnompenh as an important commercial City.
For the French, the 1860s and 1870s were a heroic period, partly because government retained in the hands of young naval officers hungry for glory, eager for promotion, and entranced by the exotic setting in which they found themselves, by the large, these pioneers of colonialism- men like Doudart de largree', Francis Garnier, Jean Moura, and Etienne aymonier- possessed great energy, sympathy for the Cambodians and intellectual integrity, they explored the Mekong, translated Cambodian chronicle, deciphered inscriptions, and arranged for the shipment of tons of Cambodia sculpture to museums in Paris, Saigon, and eventually Phnompenh, the grandeur of their exploits and of Cambodia's distant past formed a sharp contrast in their minds with the "decay" of the Cambodian court and the Helplessness " of the Cambodian people.
And yet there was probably little difference between the way Cambodia was governed in the 1860s, and the way Angkok had been governed almost a thousand years before, in both cases, perhaps ,and certainly for most of the years between, government meant a network of status relationships whereby peasants paid in rice, forest products or labor support their officials , the officials ,in turn, paid the King, using some of rice, forest products, and peasants labor with which they had been paid, the member of peasant one could exploit in this way depended on the position one was granted by the throne, positions themselves were for sale, and this tended to limit officeholders to members of the elite with enough money or goods on hand to purchase their positions.
In the nineteenth century, the destabilization of rural Society pummeled the infrastructure of these arrangements , but they persisted into the colonial era when the King's personal demands on the system were frequently tempted him into unwise investments.
End of The Establishment of the French Protectorate Cambodia
French interest in Cambodia deepened with its involvement in Vietnam also after a French naturalist, Henri Muohot (1826-1861), Visited Duang's court and then proceeded to Seam-Reap, where he" discovered" the ruins of Angkok, Mouhot suggested in a book about his travels that Cambodia was exceptionally rich and that its rulers were neglecting their patrimony, Duang's openness to Hout and and other European visitors in this period stemmed in part of from his friendship with a French missionary, Monseigneur Jean claude Miche, whose mission headquarters was located near Udong and who had actively supported the 1856 diplomatic mission, Miche persuaded the King that there could be advantages in being free from Thai control and Vietnamese threats, in the last two years of his Reign, moreover, Duang saw French expansion into Vietnam as an opportunity for him to regain territory that Cambodia had lost to the Vietnamese over the preceding two hundred years.Bogged down in guerrilla warfare in Vietnam, and unsure of support from Paris, the French administrators in Saigon were slow to respond to Cambodia's assertions of friendship, the matter lapsed when Duang Died in 1860 and Cambodia was plunged into series of civil wars, Duang's designated heir, Norodom, was unpopular in Eastern Srok and among Cham dissidents, who had almost captured Udong while Duang was alive, Norodom had spent much of his youth as a hostage at the Thai court, unable to rule, he fled Cambodia in 1861, returning with Thai support at the end of the following year, but he returned on a probationary basis, for his regalia remained in Bangkok, angered by Thai interference, and attracted by French promises of gifts, Norodom re-opened negotiations with French, according to a contemporary, the French admiral in charge of South-Vietnam, having no immediate war to fight, looked for a peaceful conquest and began dreaming about Cambodia.
The colonial era began without a shot and in a very tentative way,a delegation of French naval officers concluded a treaty with Norodom in Udong in August 1863, offering him protection at the hands of a French resident in exchange for timber concessions and mineral exploration right, Norodom managed to keep the treaty secret from his Thai advisers for several months, when they found out about it and notified Bangkok, he quickly reasserted his dependence on the Thai King, declaring to his advisers that" I desire to remain( the Thai King) servant, for his glory, until the end of my life, no change ever occurs in my heart" the Thai, in turn, kept Norodom's, change of heart a secret from the French, who learned of it only after his early declaration of faith had been ratified in Paris in early 1864.
What Norodom wanted from the French Vis-a' Vis the Thai is unclear, he seems to have been playing for time,and the method he shose resembled that of his uncle, King Chan, with French in the role of
the Vietnamese, he wanted to be crowned, and by the middle of 1864, the Thai and the French had agreed to cosponsor his coronation, the unintentionally comical aspects of the ceremony are re-counted by several French source, Thai and french officials quarreled about precedent,protocol, and regalia while Norodom, using time-honored filial imagery proclaimed his dependence on both courts, for the last time, the Cambodian King's title were chosen and transmitted by Bangkok, for the last time,too, The Cambodian King claimed to draw legitimacy from two foreign courts, for the first time, a Cambodian King accepted his crown from a European, the next three Cambodian monarch followed suit , from this point on, Thai influence in Cambodian began to wane fading even more sharply and more or less for good after King Mongkut's or ( Rama IV ) death in 1867.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mongkut_in_the_Sangha.jpeg
The imposition of French protection over Cambodia did not end the dynastic and millenarian rebellion that had plagued the earlier years of Norodom's Reign, although French military force were helpful in quelling these rebellions by 1867, the most important of these was led by Pou Kombo ពោកំបោរ, an ex-monk who claimed that he had better right than Norodom to be King, a year before, Norodom had shifted his Palace to Phnompenh, he had been urged to do so by French, just as Chan had been encouraged to move by the Vietnamese earlier in the century, and for similar tactical reasons, in the French case,commercial motives were also at work, for Phnompenh was more accessible from Saigon than an inland capital would have been, and it was hoped that the exploration of the Mekong river under commandant E,Doudart de lagree'( 1823-1868)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ernest_Doudart_de_Lagree.jpg
would result in Data about the river's Northern reaches that would justify French pipe dreams of Phnompenh as an important commercial City.
For the French, the 1860s and 1870s were a heroic period, partly because government retained in the hands of young naval officers hungry for glory, eager for promotion, and entranced by the exotic setting in which they found themselves, by the large, these pioneers of colonialism- men like Doudart de largree', Francis Garnier, Jean Moura, and Etienne aymonier- possessed great energy, sympathy for the Cambodians and intellectual integrity, they explored the Mekong, translated Cambodian chronicle, deciphered inscriptions, and arranged for the shipment of tons of Cambodia sculpture to museums in Paris, Saigon, and eventually Phnompenh, the grandeur of their exploits and of Cambodia's distant past formed a sharp contrast in their minds with the "decay" of the Cambodian court and the Helplessness " of the Cambodian people.
And yet there was probably little difference between the way Cambodia was governed in the 1860s, and the way Angkok had been governed almost a thousand years before, in both cases, perhaps ,and certainly for most of the years between, government meant a network of status relationships whereby peasants paid in rice, forest products or labor support their officials , the officials ,in turn, paid the King, using some of rice, forest products, and peasants labor with which they had been paid, the member of peasant one could exploit in this way depended on the position one was granted by the throne, positions themselves were for sale, and this tended to limit officeholders to members of the elite with enough money or goods on hand to purchase their positions.
In the nineteenth century, the destabilization of rural Society pummeled the infrastructure of these arrangements , but they persisted into the colonial era when the King's personal demands on the system were frequently tempted him into unwise investments.
End of The Establishment of the French Protectorate Cambodia
The early Stages of The French Protectorate " Cambodia "
There are several ways of looking at the years of French hegemony over Cambodia, one is to break them into phases and to trace the extension and decline of French control, another would be to examine the period and its ideology and practice- political, economic, educational, and so forth- from a French point of view , a third would be to treat the period as part of Cambodian history, connected to the times before and after French control, the French are gone, and the third perspective seems the most attractive, although there are serious gaps in the sources and useful primary material in Cambodian, aside from royal chronicles, is very scarce, in this chapter I attempt to see the French as often as possible through Cambodian eyes.
In the mean time, if we look at the colonial era in terms of the waxing and waning of French, control(the first of the three perspectives), the years break fairly easily into phases, the first phase lasted from the establishment of protectorate in 1863 to the outbreak of a national rebellion in 1884, the second phase would extend from the suppression of rebellion 1886 to King Norodom's death in 1904, when a more cooperative monarch, Norodom's half-brother, Sisowath, came to the throne, the third phase lasted until Norodom-Sihanouk's coronation in 1941 and spans the Reigns of Sisowath(r 1904-1927) and his eldest son Monivong(r 1927-1941) this period, it can be argued, was the only systematically Colonial one in Cambodian history,for in the remainder of the colonial era(1941-1953)
The French were concerned more with holding on than with systematizing their control.
From a Cambodian perspective, however, it is possible to take the view that the colonial era falls into periods rather than four, with the break occurring at Sisowath's coronation in 1906, from that point on, Cambodians stopped governing themselves and the westernization of Cambodian life intensified, what would have been recognizable in a Srok in 1904 to a Cambodian official of the 1840s had been modified sharply by 1920, when French government, particularly at the local level, had been organized as part of a total effort in Indochina.
But until the late 1940s, I suspect, few Cambodians would have considered these mechanical changes, or French presence as a whole, as having a deleterious effect on their lives or on their durable institutions of subsistence farming, Buddhism, and Kingship, the political stability that characterized most of the colonial era can be traced partly to French patronage of the King and the King's patronage of the Sangha, which tended to keep these two institutions aligned- politically, at least- with French objectives, partly because Kings, Monks and officials had no tradition of innovation and partly because popular methods of questioning their authority, heresy and rebellion had been effectively smothered by the French since 1880s, in terms of economic transformations, the significant developments that occurred in the technology of rice farming tended to be limited to the northern part of the Kingdom, where huge rice plantations had come into being, in the rest of the country, as Jean Delvert has shown, the expanding population tended to cultivate rice in small, family oriented plots.
Because of this stability, perhaps, the French in many their writings tended to romanticize and favor the Cambodians at the expense of the Vietnamese, at the same time, because in their terms so little was going on they tended to look down on the Cambodians as " Lazy" or "Obedient" an ambiguous and not very thoughtful romanticism suffuses many French language source composed on the colonial era, especially in the twentieth century, when cliches' about the people were passed along the heirlooms from official( or one issue of a newspaper) to the next, at the same time, until the early 1994s, no Cambodian-language sources questioned the efficacy of French rule or Cambodia's traditional institutions.
For these reason,it is temping to join some French authors and skip over era when"nothing happened"
to do so would be a mistake, because what was happening, especially after the economic boom of the 1920s, was that independent, pre-revolutionary Cambodia( with all its shortcomings) was being built or foreshadowed in spite of large areas of life that remained , as many French writers would say part of the " Timeless" and" Mysterious" Cambodia of Angkor.
It is tempting also to divide French behavior in Cambodia into such as categories as "Political, Economic" ans Social " terms that give the false impression that they separable segments of reality, what the French meant by them in the context of the colonial situation tended to be idiosyncratic, Politic, for example, meant dissidence and manipulation rather than participation in a politic process, Ideally, in a colonial there should be no politic at all, Economics meant Budgets, Taxes , and revenues- in other words, the economic of bureaucratic control, on the rare occasions when French writers looked at Cambodia's economy, they related it to the rest of Indochina, particularly in terms of export crops and colonial initiatives, like public works, rather than to Cambodian needs and capabilities, by the 1920s, in the eyes of French officials , Cambodian had become a rice- making machine, producing revenue as well in exchange for " Guidance " this meant that the essence of government-Rajarkar (រាជការ=រដ្ខាភិបាល) or royal work- remained what it had always been, the extraction of revenue from the peasants, as for "Social" the word as French used it did not refer to solidarity among people or relationships that added up to political cohesion សិនិទ្ធពល,instead" " Society " meant a conglomeration of families, obediently at work.
The chronological perspective and the analytical ones just dealt with may be helpful in looking at the period 1863-1953, for looking at these years in terms of Cambodian history means looking at them in terms of continuity and change ,from this angle, the alterations to Cambodian Society and thinking of Cambodian elite are as important as the apparently timeless life in the villages, which was also changing.
End of The early Stages of The French Protectorate "Cambodia"
In the mean time, if we look at the colonial era in terms of the waxing and waning of French, control(the first of the three perspectives), the years break fairly easily into phases, the first phase lasted from the establishment of protectorate in 1863 to the outbreak of a national rebellion in 1884, the second phase would extend from the suppression of rebellion 1886 to King Norodom's death in 1904, when a more cooperative monarch, Norodom's half-brother, Sisowath, came to the throne, the third phase lasted until Norodom-Sihanouk's coronation in 1941 and spans the Reigns of Sisowath(r 1904-1927) and his eldest son Monivong(r 1927-1941) this period, it can be argued, was the only systematically Colonial one in Cambodian history,for in the remainder of the colonial era(1941-1953)
The French were concerned more with holding on than with systematizing their control.
From a Cambodian perspective, however, it is possible to take the view that the colonial era falls into periods rather than four, with the break occurring at Sisowath's coronation in 1906, from that point on, Cambodians stopped governing themselves and the westernization of Cambodian life intensified, what would have been recognizable in a Srok in 1904 to a Cambodian official of the 1840s had been modified sharply by 1920, when French government, particularly at the local level, had been organized as part of a total effort in Indochina.
But until the late 1940s, I suspect, few Cambodians would have considered these mechanical changes, or French presence as a whole, as having a deleterious effect on their lives or on their durable institutions of subsistence farming, Buddhism, and Kingship, the political stability that characterized most of the colonial era can be traced partly to French patronage of the King and the King's patronage of the Sangha, which tended to keep these two institutions aligned- politically, at least- with French objectives, partly because Kings, Monks and officials had no tradition of innovation and partly because popular methods of questioning their authority, heresy and rebellion had been effectively smothered by the French since 1880s, in terms of economic transformations, the significant developments that occurred in the technology of rice farming tended to be limited to the northern part of the Kingdom, where huge rice plantations had come into being, in the rest of the country, as Jean Delvert has shown, the expanding population tended to cultivate rice in small, family oriented plots.
Because of this stability, perhaps, the French in many their writings tended to romanticize and favor the Cambodians at the expense of the Vietnamese, at the same time, because in their terms so little was going on they tended to look down on the Cambodians as " Lazy" or "Obedient" an ambiguous and not very thoughtful romanticism suffuses many French language source composed on the colonial era, especially in the twentieth century, when cliches' about the people were passed along the heirlooms from official( or one issue of a newspaper) to the next, at the same time, until the early 1994s, no Cambodian-language sources questioned the efficacy of French rule or Cambodia's traditional institutions.
For these reason,it is temping to join some French authors and skip over era when"nothing happened"
to do so would be a mistake, because what was happening, especially after the economic boom of the 1920s, was that independent, pre-revolutionary Cambodia( with all its shortcomings) was being built or foreshadowed in spite of large areas of life that remained , as many French writers would say part of the " Timeless" and" Mysterious" Cambodia of Angkor.
It is tempting also to divide French behavior in Cambodia into such as categories as "Political, Economic" ans Social " terms that give the false impression that they separable segments of reality, what the French meant by them in the context of the colonial situation tended to be idiosyncratic, Politic, for example, meant dissidence and manipulation rather than participation in a politic process, Ideally, in a colonial there should be no politic at all, Economics meant Budgets, Taxes , and revenues- in other words, the economic of bureaucratic control, on the rare occasions when French writers looked at Cambodia's economy, they related it to the rest of Indochina, particularly in terms of export crops and colonial initiatives, like public works, rather than to Cambodian needs and capabilities, by the 1920s, in the eyes of French officials , Cambodian had become a rice- making machine, producing revenue as well in exchange for " Guidance " this meant that the essence of government-Rajarkar (រាជការ=រដ្ខាភិបាល) or royal work- remained what it had always been, the extraction of revenue from the peasants, as for "Social" the word as French used it did not refer to solidarity among people or relationships that added up to political cohesion សិនិទ្ធពល,instead" " Society " meant a conglomeration of families, obediently at work.
The chronological perspective and the analytical ones just dealt with may be helpful in looking at the period 1863-1953, for looking at these years in terms of Cambodian history means looking at them in terms of continuity and change ,from this angle, the alterations to Cambodian Society and thinking of Cambodian elite are as important as the apparently timeless life in the villages, which was also changing.
End of The early Stages of The French Protectorate "Cambodia"
The Restoration Of Cambodia Independence
As the Vietnamese court and its officials in Cambodia sought a solution to what they saw as an internal Vietnamese problem, Chaophraya Bodin's expeditionary force, numbering thirty-five thousand men, assembled near Battambang and then attacked and defeated the Vietnamese garrison at Pursat, Bodin was prepared to attack the capital but hesitate because he was short of supplies and lacked confidence in his troops instead he withdrew to Battambang, where he sought to consolidate his political position, during the siege of Pursat,eighteen rebellious Oknha had written him pleading for Thai support and for Duang's return from Bangkok, the Oknha pledge allegiance to Rama III, complained about shortages of supplies, and asserted That Cambodians would be happy only if the political conditions of the early nineteenth century, before the Vietnamese had arrived, were re-established.
Bodin transmitted the letter to Bangkok and added a recommendation for Duang's release from Custody and his return to political power,in January 1841,Duang reached Battambang, accompanied
by Thai and Cambodian advisers and carrying gifts for his supporters, including insignia of rank and royal accoutrement's គ្រឿងផ្គុតផ្គង់ទាហាន provide for him and Rama II according to one source, Bodin had urged Duang's release because"If there are no superior people to took after a population, the common people have no security" the records alsosuggest that Bodin's motives included winning over the Oknha (he was eager that local Khmer, rather than his own inexperienced troops, should engage the Vietnamese)by promising them that Duang would ruler over Cambodia, for the rest of the 1840s, Duang was to be closely watched and manipulated សម្របសម្រួល by Bodin. Duang's return to Cambodia and Rama III's solicitude for him opened an era in Thai-Cambodian relations that lasted until French intervention in 1863.
While Duang was conferring with potential courtiers and Bodin was complaining that the newcomers were consuming Thai supplies, Thieu Tri was attempting to understand and control Vietnamese policy toward Cambodia, with a view to thwarting a Thai invasion, pacifying rebellious provinces of Southern Vietnam, and retaining Vietnamese prestige, in late 1841s, Truong Minh Giang attempted once again to bring Prince Im to power, but edicts in his name attracted no support, it was at this point, perhaps that Truong Minh Giang (Trương Minh Giảng) realized that he had almost no chance of restoring a favorable political balance in Cambodia, he withdraw to Vietnamese, talking Im, the Princesses, and the population of the City, numbering some six thousand people, with him,when he arrived in Vietnam, he sent a letter to Hue' in which he took the blame for"losing" Cambodia, to which he referred as emperor's rightful property" he then took poison and died.
The Vietnamese failure did not mean that the Thai had succeeded and by 1843 Cambodia had become a quagmire for Chaophraya Bodin, as he wrote Bangkok" we have been in Cambodia for three years without accomplishing anything ,we are short of supplies, people are going off into the forest to live on leaves and roots and nearly a thousand men in our army have died from lack of food",in 1844, he had to abandon Phnompenh, where the Vietnamese soon reinstalled Princess Mei as Cambodia's "Legitimate Queen" while Thai force congregated near Udong, the Vietnamese maneuver infuriated Bodin, who saw that many Oknha might now be unwilling to support the Thai, he complained to Bangkok that " all the Khmer Leader and nobles, all the district chiefs and all the common people are ignorant, stupid foolish and gullible, they have no idea what is true and what is false".
In spite of these difficulties , Vietnamese attempts to dislodge the Thai forces around Udong throughout 1845 were fruitless by the end of the year, the Thai and Vietnamese opened negotiations for a cease-fire, the talks moved forward, for they were grounded in Thieu-Tri' willingness to abandon his military positions in Cambodia and by implication, his father's policies there, they moved slowly,however ,in a context of military stalemate, even though in political terms conditions were favorable to the Thai, in Prince Duang they had a seasoned, popular ruler loyal to Bangkok and able to work through a well established network of loyal officials in the Srok, but the Vietnamese still occupied a strong bargaining position, particularly as they retained Cambodia's regalia, without which Duang could not legitimately ascend the throne.
In a face-saving gesture they demanded that a tributary mission headed by a Cambodian official travel to Hue' in March 1846 and declare Cambodia 's pro form subservience to Vietnamese, when the embassy returned to Phnompenh in June 1847, the Vietnamese handed over the Cambodian regalia and released several members of royal family who had been in their custody, in some cases for many years, soon afterward, they withdrew their force from Cambodia, for the first time since 1811, there were no Vietnamese official on Cambodia soil.
Over the next few months, in a series of ceremonial gestures, Duang reenacted the restoration of Thai sponsored Kingship that had been eclipsed for so many years, it would be mistake to dismiss these ceremonial actions as mere protocol,because Duang ,like most Southeast Asian rulers at the time, did not disentangle what we would call the religious and political strands of his thinking, duties , and behavior and political actions were thought to enhance or diminish a monarch's fund of merit.
Many of these ceremonies had to do with the restoration of Theravada Buddhism as the state religion, one account relates that Duang :
Levelled the (Vietnamese) fortifications at Phnompenh, and hauled away the bricks to build and restore,, (seven) Buddhist monasteries near Udong, Broken Buddha-images were recast, and new ones were carved,Monks were encouraged to live in monasteries again, and people were encouraged to respect them.
To his subjects, Duang's return to Cambodia and the restoration of Buddhism , there were ex-post facto proofs of his Kindliness, legitimacy, and merit, an inscription from 1851 describes the electric effect of this restoration in the 1840s.
There was a mighty ruler whose name was Duang, he came from the Royal City 9Bangkok) to Cambodia, and lived in the fortified city of Udong with merit, skill and masterly intelligence, the King scattered his enemies in terror, and soon the three warring states were friends again.
On an auspicious day in April 1848. Duang was anointed by Thai and Cambodian Brahmans in Udong and ascended the Cambodian Throne, he was Fifty-two years old, and his Reign, which lasted twelve years ,can be seen as a Cambodian renaissance, for most of these years, the Kingdom was at peace, and although Thai political advisers and some Thai troops lingered at Udong, Duang was relatively free to make political decisions, such as those connected with awarding title to Oknha, The Chronicles of his Reign place much emphasis on its restoratives aspects, a wide range of institutions and relationships was involved, the Chronicle points to linguistic reforms, public works, sumptuous laws, and new sets of royal titles, from other sources, we know that Duang was an accomplished poet and presided over the promulgation of a new law code and the Compilation of new Chronicle histories.
Chroniclers in the 1880s and 1930s, looking back to those few years of Cambodian independence prior to French control, may have considered Duang's Reign to be kind of golden age, the King himself seems to have been cautious after so many years of se-micapivity in Bangkok, his relations with Rama III and Rama IV ( King Mongkut) were subservient, as his letters to these monarch show, he seems to have make no attempt to improve relations with Vietnamese in the hope of gaining some freedom of maneuver, perhaps because he was frightened by the precedent of the 1830s and because from the Vietnamese point of view any improvement in relations would only have intensified his dependency on them instead, in 1853 he appears to have somewhat clumsily sought French protection by sending gifts and offering his "Humble homage" to the emperor of French, Napoleon III, via the French consulate in Singapore, Duang was probably put up to this by French missionaries who were active near Udong, his gifts included four elephant tusks, two rhinoceros horns, and sizable quantities of sugar and while pepper, a French diplomatic mission to his court, bearing a draft treaty of friendship was not allowed to proceed to Udong by the Thai, who had swiftly brought their client monarch to heel.
Duang seems to have sought French help not so much to escape Thai protection, which would have been impossible to manage, as to defend himself against the Vietnamese, in letters to the French, he referred to them, as Pol-Pot was to do in the 1970s as Cambodia's "traditional enemies" Ironically , in the 1860s, France took over Vietnamese patronage of Cambodia, eliminated Vietnamese influence, and then proceeded to encourage Vietnamese immigration into Cambodia, after his tempt to make friends with French had failed, Duang explained himself to a French missionary, saying" what would you have me do? I have two masters who always have an eye fixed on me, they are my neighbors, and France is far a way." Clearly, many conditions had to change before Cambodian could emerge from this dual dependency, which had lasted with brief interludes for more than fifty years.
The end of The Restoration Of Cambodia Independence.
Bodin transmitted the letter to Bangkok and added a recommendation for Duang's release from Custody and his return to political power,in January 1841,Duang reached Battambang, accompanied
by Thai and Cambodian advisers and carrying gifts for his supporters, including insignia of rank and royal accoutrement's គ្រឿងផ្គុតផ្គង់ទាហាន provide for him and Rama II according to one source, Bodin had urged Duang's release because"If there are no superior people to took after a population, the common people have no security" the records alsosuggest that Bodin's motives included winning over the Oknha (he was eager that local Khmer, rather than his own inexperienced troops, should engage the Vietnamese)by promising them that Duang would ruler over Cambodia, for the rest of the 1840s, Duang was to be closely watched and manipulated សម្របសម្រួល by Bodin. Duang's return to Cambodia and Rama III's solicitude for him opened an era in Thai-Cambodian relations that lasted until French intervention in 1863.
The Vietnamese failure did not mean that the Thai had succeeded and by 1843 Cambodia had become a quagmire for Chaophraya Bodin, as he wrote Bangkok" we have been in Cambodia for three years without accomplishing anything ,we are short of supplies, people are going off into the forest to live on leaves and roots and nearly a thousand men in our army have died from lack of food",in 1844, he had to abandon Phnompenh, where the Vietnamese soon reinstalled Princess Mei as Cambodia's "Legitimate Queen" while Thai force congregated near Udong, the Vietnamese maneuver infuriated Bodin, who saw that many Oknha might now be unwilling to support the Thai, he complained to Bangkok that " all the Khmer Leader and nobles, all the district chiefs and all the common people are ignorant, stupid foolish and gullible, they have no idea what is true and what is false".
In spite of these difficulties , Vietnamese attempts to dislodge the Thai forces around Udong throughout 1845 were fruitless by the end of the year, the Thai and Vietnamese opened negotiations for a cease-fire, the talks moved forward, for they were grounded in Thieu-Tri' willingness to abandon his military positions in Cambodia and by implication, his father's policies there, they moved slowly,however ,in a context of military stalemate, even though in political terms conditions were favorable to the Thai, in Prince Duang they had a seasoned, popular ruler loyal to Bangkok and able to work through a well established network of loyal officials in the Srok, but the Vietnamese still occupied a strong bargaining position, particularly as they retained Cambodia's regalia, without which Duang could not legitimately ascend the throne.
In a face-saving gesture they demanded that a tributary mission headed by a Cambodian official travel to Hue' in March 1846 and declare Cambodia 's pro form subservience to Vietnamese, when the embassy returned to Phnompenh in June 1847, the Vietnamese handed over the Cambodian regalia and released several members of royal family who had been in their custody, in some cases for many years, soon afterward, they withdrew their force from Cambodia, for the first time since 1811, there were no Vietnamese official on Cambodia soil.
Over the next few months, in a series of ceremonial gestures, Duang reenacted the restoration of Thai sponsored Kingship that had been eclipsed for so many years, it would be mistake to dismiss these ceremonial actions as mere protocol,because Duang ,like most Southeast Asian rulers at the time, did not disentangle what we would call the religious and political strands of his thinking, duties , and behavior and political actions were thought to enhance or diminish a monarch's fund of merit.
Many of these ceremonies had to do with the restoration of Theravada Buddhism as the state religion, one account relates that Duang :
Levelled the (Vietnamese) fortifications at Phnompenh, and hauled away the bricks to build and restore,, (seven) Buddhist monasteries near Udong, Broken Buddha-images were recast, and new ones were carved,Monks were encouraged to live in monasteries again, and people were encouraged to respect them.
To his subjects, Duang's return to Cambodia and the restoration of Buddhism , there were ex-post facto proofs of his Kindliness, legitimacy, and merit, an inscription from 1851 describes the electric effect of this restoration in the 1840s.
There was a mighty ruler whose name was Duang, he came from the Royal City 9Bangkok) to Cambodia, and lived in the fortified city of Udong with merit, skill and masterly intelligence, the King scattered his enemies in terror, and soon the three warring states were friends again.
On an auspicious day in April 1848. Duang was anointed by Thai and Cambodian Brahmans in Udong and ascended the Cambodian Throne, he was Fifty-two years old, and his Reign, which lasted twelve years ,can be seen as a Cambodian renaissance, for most of these years, the Kingdom was at peace, and although Thai political advisers and some Thai troops lingered at Udong, Duang was relatively free to make political decisions, such as those connected with awarding title to Oknha, The Chronicles of his Reign place much emphasis on its restoratives aspects, a wide range of institutions and relationships was involved, the Chronicle points to linguistic reforms, public works, sumptuous laws, and new sets of royal titles, from other sources, we know that Duang was an accomplished poet and presided over the promulgation of a new law code and the Compilation of new Chronicle histories.
| លេខរជ្ជកាល | នាមសំរាប់នាមផ្ទាល់ | កាលកំនត់រជ្ជកាល | រាជធានី | រាជវង្ស |
| ១៧៥៨-១៧៧៥ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ២ | រាមរាជាអង្គនន់ | ១៧៧៥-១៧៧៩ | ឧដុង្គ | ឧទាហរណ៍ |
| ៣ | នារាយណ៍រាជាទី៣ អង្គអេង | ១៧៧៩-១៧៩៦ | ឧដុង | បុត្រព្រះឧទ័យរាជា |
| ៤ | ចៅហ្វ៊ាប៊ុក | ១៧៩៦-១៨០៥ | ឧដុង | |
| ៥ | ឧទ័យរាជា អង្គចន្ទ | ១៨០៦-១៨៣៤ | ឧដុងភ្នំពេញ | បុត្រស្ដេច៣ |
| ៦ | អង្គម៉ីក្សត្រី | អង្គម៉ីក្សត្រី | កោះស្លា កែត | បុត្រីស្តេច៥ |
| ៧ | ហវិរក្សរាមាឥស្សរាធិបតី អង្គដួង | ១៨៤០ ១៨៥៩ | ឃ្លាំងស្បែក ឧដុង្គ | បុត្រស្តេច ៣ |
| ៨ | នរោត្តម អង្គច្រឡឹង | ១៨៥៩-១៩០៤ | ឧដុង្គភ្នំពេញ | បុត្រស្តេច៧ |
| ៩ | ស៊ីសុវត្តិ | ១៩០៤ ១៩២៧ | ភ្នំពេញ | បុត្រស្ដេច៧ |
| ១០ | ស៊ីសុវត្តិ មុនីវង្ស | ១៩២៧ ១៩៤១ | ភ្នំពេញ | បុត្រស្តេច៩ |
Chroniclers in the 1880s and 1930s, looking back to those few years of Cambodian independence prior to French control, may have considered Duang's Reign to be kind of golden age, the King himself seems to have been cautious after so many years of se-micapivity in Bangkok, his relations with Rama III and Rama IV ( King Mongkut) were subservient, as his letters to these monarch show, he seems to have make no attempt to improve relations with Vietnamese in the hope of gaining some freedom of maneuver, perhaps because he was frightened by the precedent of the 1830s and because from the Vietnamese point of view any improvement in relations would only have intensified his dependency on them instead, in 1853 he appears to have somewhat clumsily sought French protection by sending gifts and offering his "Humble homage" to the emperor of French, Napoleon III, via the French consulate in Singapore, Duang was probably put up to this by French missionaries who were active near Udong, his gifts included four elephant tusks, two rhinoceros horns, and sizable quantities of sugar and while pepper, a French diplomatic mission to his court, bearing a draft treaty of friendship was not allowed to proceed to Udong by the Thai, who had swiftly brought their client monarch to heel.
Duang seems to have sought French help not so much to escape Thai protection, which would have been impossible to manage, as to defend himself against the Vietnamese, in letters to the French, he referred to them, as Pol-Pot was to do in the 1970s as Cambodia's "traditional enemies" Ironically , in the 1860s, France took over Vietnamese patronage of Cambodia, eliminated Vietnamese influence, and then proceeded to encourage Vietnamese immigration into Cambodia, after his tempt to make friends with French had failed, Duang explained himself to a French missionary, saying" what would you have me do? I have two masters who always have an eye fixed on me, they are my neighbors, and France is far a way." Clearly, many conditions had to change before Cambodian could emerge from this dual dependency, which had lasted with brief interludes for more than fifty years.
The end of The Restoration Of Cambodia Independence.
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