The Best of Cambodia & Laos

was Mahayana, not part of the Theravada
line that dominates in Cambodia today).
Jayavarman VII died around 1215 and
by this time, even though the Khmer
empire was at its zenith, cracks were beginning
to appear and signs of a permanent
decline were beginning to show. The massive
construction projects were taking a
heavy toll on resources. The god-kings
destroyed themselves by the effort of
maintaining their own physical glory in
water and in stone. The Thai empire of
Ayutthaya was growing in strength as the
Angkorian empire wore itself out. Their
raids on the Khmers became ever more
successful and ever more aggressive. In
1431, Siam attacked the city of Angkor
itself, sacking it wholesale. It was around
this period that the Khmer empire started
to shrink and the area of what is now
Phnom Penh grew in importance, as Angkor
came under repeated attack from the
warlike Siamese. For the next 150 years,
conflict with the Thais largely dictated the
agenda. It didn’t all go the Thais’ way. At
one point, Khmer soldiers got very nearly
to the walls of Ayutthaya only to discover
the Burmese had beat them to it, vanquishing
the Thais and occupying their
capital. Ayutthaya recovered, however, and
the Khmers were crushed by their armies
in 1594.
YEARS OF CHAOS & THE
ARRIVAL OF THE FRENCH
From this time on, Cambodia was largely
a power vacuum. Weak kings looked to
both Vietnam and Siam for protection.
The whole of southern Vietnam including
the Mekong Delta was ceded to the Vietnamese,
including the village of Prey
Nokor—a place now called either Ho Chi
Minh City or Saigon. The Thais took the
northwestern provinces of Battambang
and Siem Reap, a bitter historical irony
since the name Siem Reap means “Defeat
of Siam.” By the late 18th century, Siam
was in total control. The only reason that
Cambodia survived at all was because the
Thais became preoccupied with fending
off the ever-aggressive Burmese and the
Vietnamese created their own problems of
internal strife.
Then there was a colonial intervention.
France had initially established and consolidated
its rule in Vietnam as part of a
move to protect its valuable trade interests.
In 1867, French gunboats made their way
up the Mekong and King Norodom I was
forced to sign a treaty making Cambodia a
protectorate of France. For the king at the
time, the choice was one of dominance by
either the French or the Thais, and the
French were the preferred choice. This
move actually reinforced the territorial
integrity of Cambodia, since it halted Thai
and Vietnamese appropriation of territory.
In 1887, Cambodia became a part of the
newly formed Federation of French Indochina
with the Vietnamese provinces of
Annam in the north and Cochin in the
south. Laos was ceded to France after the
Thai-Franco War of 1893. In Cambodia,
Norodom remained on the throne, but it
was the French who called the shots as
they remained aggressively predatory,
making a further series of land grabs
against the Thais over the following years.
Cambodia remained very much a backwater
and a buffer. The French made their
money in Vietnam. The Khmers were also
heavily taxed, but all the money was used to
develop the neighboring provinces of what
is now Vietnam. Cambodia remained
undeveloped, even in Phnom Penh where
most positions of authority in the colonial
administration were held by Vietnamese.
The French were clever in that they actually
exalted the Cambodian monarchy in a way
not seen since the days of Angkor, thus diffusing
a lot of anti-French sentiment.
Norodom died in 1904 and was succeeded
by King Sisowath, who reigned
until 1927. He was followed by King
Monivong. On Monivong’s death, a
19-year-old named Sihanouk was placed
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CAMBODIA IN DEPTH 2
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