A SHORT HISTORY OF CAMBODIA: FROM EMPIRE TO SURVIVAL

By John A. Tully

The first independent Vietnamese state had been established in 939 AD and afterwards their expansion southwards was inexorable. They began to annex the Cham lands as early as 1069, and after sacking the Cham capital in 1471 they forcibly assimilated their new subjects. The road was also clear for them to begin to move into Cambodian territory.  

Related article: The Story of King Jayajetta II and his Vietnamese wife Ang Cu. 

In the 1620s, they began to move into the Khmer lands adjacent to Champa north of the Mekong delta. Their task was made easier by the disarray of the Cambodian government, which one historian has described as ‘faction-ridden and under Siamese influence’. Vietnamese influence at the Cambodian court was also growing during this period. Borri mentions that in 1620 the ‘king of Cambogia’ (Jayajetta II) married a Vietnamese princess in order to cement an alliance against the Siamese. Jayajetta’s marriage was part of what was to become an ongoing process in which the Cambodian state sought to play off its powerful neighbours against one another in order to maintain some measure of sovereignty; King Sihanouk would play a similar game during the 1950s and 1960s.

Given Cambodia’s increasing weakness vis-à-vis its neighbours, it was probably the best diplomatic option down through the centuries to the international Realpolitik of the 20th century. In 1623, King Jayajetta II granted Vietnamese traders and settlers permission to live and work near the Khmer town of Prey Nokor, situated on a distributary of the Mekong delta, and the largest town in that sparsely settled region of Cambodia. This was probably part of the price of the king’s marriage to the Nguyen princess. The settlers’ numbers steadily increased and in 1698 they set up a Vietnamese vice-royalty in the district and renamed the town Saigon. Earlier, in 1658, a Vietnamese army had penetrated deep into Cambodia-proper, only withdrawing the following year. 

By 1780, the Vietnamese controlled almost the whole of the lower delta region and the Camau Peninsula. In the delta, the Vietnamese had carried out a process similar to that of the Israelis in the present-day Occupied Territories of Palestine, of ‘creating political facts on the ground’ by populating the region with settlers. It was a slowmotion the de facto border, or onto marginal lands. The 19th century French historian Adhémard Leclère claimed that the Vietnamese settlers provoked border incidents so as to be able to demand indemnities in land from the Khmers. 

Although almost half a million Khmer Krom still live in the Vietnamese lower delta today, it is probable, as the distinguished archaeologist and writer Louis Malleret has argued, that only the coming of the French saved them from assimilation or extinction. The Khmers’ religion taught them resignation in the face of seemingly inevitable misfortune and they would need every ounce of faith in a ‘historical amphitheatre’ that, as Albert Camus reminds us, ‘has always contained the martyr and the lion’ and where the ‘former relied on eternal consolation and the latter on raw historical meat’. 

For their part, metaphorically speaking, the Siamese tiger and the Vietnamese crocodile had voracious appetites for Cambodian flesh. However, the designs of Cambodia’s external enemies were assisted by periodic bouts of dynastic feuding within the country itself and by the late 1770s, during which decade the Siamese burned Phnom Penh, the country’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb. 

From the 18th century onwards, Cambodia became a tributary state of its neighbours, a common form of foreign relations in Southeast Asia and one originally developed by the Chinese. The Cambodian kings were expected to pay annual tribute in ritual ceremonies in Hué or Bangkok. Gifts and letters would be exchanged, underlining the dependent status of the vassal monarch at Phnom Penh. In its turn, Vietnam was expected to acknowledge its own tributary status with regard to China. There were differences in the relationships between Cambodia and its neighbours. 

There was a sharp cultural divide between Cambodia and Vietnam; although both countries were based economically on wet rice cultivation, Vietnam was a Sinitic society and shared much of its powerful northern neighbour’s cultural, social and political institutions. Vietnam, like China, based its system of government and administration on the principles of Confucius. 

The Vietnamese also shared the cult of ancestor worship, Chinese calligraphy and many aspects of family life. Like China, Vietnam was a bureaucratised state with a high degree of centralisation and social stratification. Its people generally ascribed to the tenets of Mahayana Buddhism, although French missionaries had been rather more successful in Vietnam than in Cambodia. Cambodia, on the other hand, shared an Indianised cultural tradition with its other neighbour, Siam, and both countries practised the Theravada brand of Buddhism, leavened with residual Hindu and animist influences. 

Government and administration was looser and these dissimilarities were reflected in the differences in relations between the three countries. For the Vietnamese, the Khmers were by definition barbarians to be punished, patronised or civilised, depending on the situation. The Siamese, who shared much of the culture of Cambodia, were often more tolerant and tended to view the Khmers as children, albeit unruly and disobedient ones. 

This would explain the frequent resort to stern measures, as for instance when they burned down Phnom Penh in 1772, and invaded the country in 1811, 1833 and again in the 1840s. However, it is clear they also felt some sense of responsibility for the fate of their Theravadist neighbour, whose capital lay much closer to Vietnam than to Siam. Until the 19th century the actions of Siam and Vietnam in Cambodia were usually constrained by the desire on both sides to avoid an all-out military collision with each other. Although they continually intrigued and jockeyed for power and influence in the kingdom, they both understood that it was in their interests to allow Cambodia to exist as a semi-independent buffer state. 

This did not stop them from pushing home the advantage when the other was preoccupied with other problems, as when the Nguyen dynasty was confronted with the Tay Son rebellion in Vietnam, or when the Siamese were distracted by wars with Burma. The situation changed in the early 19th century when the Vietnamese decided on a policy of territorial and cultural assimilation. The resulting chaos and instability almost destroyed Cambodia. Thank again for your help!!! KPCS