Anonymous said...
The jaws of the Thai ‘tiger’ and the Vietnamese ‘crocodile’
We Cambodians have a saying: "choss teuk kropeu, loeng leu kla" [if we escape to hide in the water, we will be eaten by the crocodiles (Vietnamese) and if we try to climb the embankment to escape from the crocodiles, we will be eaten by the tigers (Thais)]. Thus, the weakened Khmer kingdom has long been torn by the the jaws of the 'Thai tigers' and the 'Vietnamese crocodiles', literally.
The geographical positioning of Cambodia in between the jaws of the Thai ‘tiger’ and the Vietnamese ‘crocodile’ has proven pivotal in Cambodia’s post-Angkorean history, as the Khmer royal court was split by in-fighting, rebellion and war. A vicious cycle began in which contending rivals for the throne would ask for backing from either the Siamese or the Annamites [Vietnamese] when attacked by the other side, paying for this military patronage with money, land, manpower and foreign domination. The size and power of the kingdom shrank as the kingdom lost territory and revenue, ultimately leading Cambodian kings to seek French protection from the encroachments of these neighbours.
Cambodia became a French Protectorate in 1863. By this time, it had lost two key tracts of land that would feature prominently in later ethno-nationalist discourse. The southeastern territories in the Mekong Delta (which Cambodians refer to as ‘lower Cambodia’ or Kampuchea Krom), including Saigon (which Cambodians still call by its Khmer name, Prey Nokor), gradually passed into Vietnamese hands beginning in the 1600s, while the northwestern provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap, which included Angkor Wat, came under Thai control in the 1790s.
History also could be used to reassert claims over Angkor Wat and the lost northwestern provinces, which were returned to Cambodia by the 1907 Franco-Siamese Treaty. On the other hand, the ‘gift’ of Angkorean history fits with French colonial ideology, which legitimised its dominion as part of a ‘civilizing mission’. Invoking the turn-of-the-century stage theory, the French depicted Cambodians as a ‘fallen’ race that had ‘degenerated’ into a child-like state of ‘ignorance’ and ‘primitivism’. The French would help the child-like race regain some of its former grandeur through modernization, the restoration of its (now reinvented) traditions and reconstruction of the Angkorean past.
At the same time, the French also essentialized and eulogized certain aspects of the national character of this ‘fallen’ race. If Khmers were lazy, backward and ignorant, they could still be commended for their ‘gentle’ soul. Here we find an origin for the stereotype of Cambodians as a ‘gentle, smiling people’ who, as Penny Edwards has noted, came to be characterized as altruistic, peaceful and morally superior. This moral superiority was often justified in racial terms as the more ‘Aryan’ Khmers were contrasted to ‘yellow’ people, the ‘“mendacious, dirty, thieving” Vietnamese and the “wily, greedy, heartless”
In fact that many Cambodians strongly believe that the Thai ‘tiger’, like the Vietnamese ‘crocodile’, covets Cambodian territory. If the French reinvented Cambodia’s historical trajectory in terms of Angkor and gave the Thai a prominent role in the demise and territorial diminishment of the empire, a number of twentieth-century events reinforced the idea of a continued Thai desire to annex Cambodian land. As recently as the start of World War Two, for example, Thailand ‘swallowed’ a large chunk of Cambodia, taking back Battambang and most of Siem Reap (though not Angkor Wat) at the end of the Franco-Siamese conflict. While Bangkok returned the territories in 1947, the annexation occurred at a key moment in the Cambodian independence movement and contributed to ethnonationalist misgivings about Thai intentions.
Thai had even stolen Cambodian script, modified the alphabets, and later tried to claim that ‘Cambodia had stolen the letters from the Thai!’ To highlight the scheming and dangerous nature of Thais, Thai king is able to capture Longvek in the 16th century and take possession of the two statues, which contain books filled with sacred knowledge. To penetrate the dense bamboo fortifications surrounding Longvek, Thai soldiers fire cannons full of coins into this bamboo forest. After the Thais retreated, the Cambodians cut down the bamboo to get the coins, thereby opened a gate and route that enabled the Thais to sack Longvek upon their return. At this time, the Thais took the "Preah Ko (the Sacred Cow) and Preah Kaev (the Sacred Crystal)– a legend "statues, and the wealth of knowledge they contained, back to Siam.
Preah Kor and Preah Kaev ‘is a very matter to the Cambodian people. . . . Thai strategy to take our Cambodian base. . . . They took over Cambodian territory and killed many people.’ For Cambodians this highly symbolic legend condenses a number of referents: a history of Thai invasion, trickery and aggression; Cambodia’s loss of knowledge and resulting inferiority to Thailand; and its decline and weakness in relationship to its neighbours after the fall of Longvek.
(thanks L.C)
reference
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, October 2006. Printed in the United Kingdom.
© 2006 The National University of Singapore doi:10.1017/S0022463406000737
The jaws of the Thai ‘tiger’ and the Vietnamese ‘crocodile’
We Cambodians have a saying: "choss teuk kropeu, loeng leu kla" [if we escape to hide in the water, we will be eaten by the crocodiles (Vietnamese) and if we try to climb the embankment to escape from the crocodiles, we will be eaten by the tigers (Thais)]. Thus, the weakened Khmer kingdom has long been torn by the the jaws of the 'Thai tigers' and the 'Vietnamese crocodiles', literally.
The geographical positioning of Cambodia in between the jaws of the Thai ‘tiger’ and the Vietnamese ‘crocodile’ has proven pivotal in Cambodia’s post-Angkorean history, as the Khmer royal court was split by in-fighting, rebellion and war. A vicious cycle began in which contending rivals for the throne would ask for backing from either the Siamese or the Annamites [Vietnamese] when attacked by the other side, paying for this military patronage with money, land, manpower and foreign domination. The size and power of the kingdom shrank as the kingdom lost territory and revenue, ultimately leading Cambodian kings to seek French protection from the encroachments of these neighbours.
Cambodia became a French Protectorate in 1863. By this time, it had lost two key tracts of land that would feature prominently in later ethno-nationalist discourse. The southeastern territories in the Mekong Delta (which Cambodians refer to as ‘lower Cambodia’ or Kampuchea Krom), including Saigon (which Cambodians still call by its Khmer name, Prey Nokor), gradually passed into Vietnamese hands beginning in the 1600s, while the northwestern provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap, which included Angkor Wat, came under Thai control in the 1790s.
History also could be used to reassert claims over Angkor Wat and the lost northwestern provinces, which were returned to Cambodia by the 1907 Franco-Siamese Treaty. On the other hand, the ‘gift’ of Angkorean history fits with French colonial ideology, which legitimised its dominion as part of a ‘civilizing mission’. Invoking the turn-of-the-century stage theory, the French depicted Cambodians as a ‘fallen’ race that had ‘degenerated’ into a child-like state of ‘ignorance’ and ‘primitivism’. The French would help the child-like race regain some of its former grandeur through modernization, the restoration of its (now reinvented) traditions and reconstruction of the Angkorean past.
At the same time, the French also essentialized and eulogized certain aspects of the national character of this ‘fallen’ race. If Khmers were lazy, backward and ignorant, they could still be commended for their ‘gentle’ soul. Here we find an origin for the stereotype of Cambodians as a ‘gentle, smiling people’ who, as Penny Edwards has noted, came to be characterized as altruistic, peaceful and morally superior. This moral superiority was often justified in racial terms as the more ‘Aryan’ Khmers were contrasted to ‘yellow’ people, the ‘“mendacious, dirty, thieving” Vietnamese and the “wily, greedy, heartless”
In fact that many Cambodians strongly believe that the Thai ‘tiger’, like the Vietnamese ‘crocodile’, covets Cambodian territory. If the French reinvented Cambodia’s historical trajectory in terms of Angkor and gave the Thai a prominent role in the demise and territorial diminishment of the empire, a number of twentieth-century events reinforced the idea of a continued Thai desire to annex Cambodian land. As recently as the start of World War Two, for example, Thailand ‘swallowed’ a large chunk of Cambodia, taking back Battambang and most of Siem Reap (though not Angkor Wat) at the end of the Franco-Siamese conflict. While Bangkok returned the territories in 1947, the annexation occurred at a key moment in the Cambodian independence movement and contributed to ethnonationalist misgivings about Thai intentions.
Thai had even stolen Cambodian script, modified the alphabets, and later tried to claim that ‘Cambodia had stolen the letters from the Thai!’ To highlight the scheming and dangerous nature of Thais, Thai king is able to capture Longvek in the 16th century and take possession of the two statues, which contain books filled with sacred knowledge. To penetrate the dense bamboo fortifications surrounding Longvek, Thai soldiers fire cannons full of coins into this bamboo forest. After the Thais retreated, the Cambodians cut down the bamboo to get the coins, thereby opened a gate and route that enabled the Thais to sack Longvek upon their return. At this time, the Thais took the "Preah Ko (the Sacred Cow) and Preah Kaev (the Sacred Crystal)– a legend "statues, and the wealth of knowledge they contained, back to Siam.
Preah Kor and Preah Kaev ‘is a very matter to the Cambodian people. . . . Thai strategy to take our Cambodian base. . . . They took over Cambodian territory and killed many people.’ For Cambodians this highly symbolic legend condenses a number of referents: a history of Thai invasion, trickery and aggression; Cambodia’s loss of knowledge and resulting inferiority to Thailand; and its decline and weakness in relationship to its neighbours after the fall of Longvek.
(thanks L.C)
reference
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, October 2006. Printed in the United Kingdom.
© 2006 The National University of Singapore doi:10.1017/S0022463406000737
1 comment:
Youn,...Ah kro peu! Ah kro peu youn!
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