Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot [Hardcover]

David P Chandler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0813309271 | ISBN-13: 978-0813309279

In the tragic recent history of Cambodia—a past scarred by a long occupation by Vietnamese forces and by the preceding three-year reign of terror by the brutal Khmer Rouge—no figure looms larger or more ominously than that of Pol Pot. As secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) since 1962 and as prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), he has been widely blamed for trying to destroy Cambodian society. By implementing policies whose effects were genocidal, he oversaw the deaths of more than one million of his nation’s people.The political career of Saloth Sar (b. 1928), better known by his nom de guerre Pol Pot, forms a critical but largely inaccessible portion of twentieth-century Cambodian history. What we know about his life is sketchy: a comfortable childhood, three years of study in France, and a short career as a schoolteacher preceded several years—spent mostly in hiding—as a guerrilla and the commander of the victorious army in Cambodia’s civil war. His career reached a climax when he and his associates, coming to power, attempted to transform their country along lines more radical than any attempted by a modern regime. Driven into hiding in 1979 by invading Vietnamese forces, Pol Pot maintained his leadership of a Khmer Rouge guerrilla army in exile, remaining a power and a threat. Even now, as the Khmer Rouge take their controversial place in the new coalition government, Pol Pot likely continues to be a hidden force.In this political biography, David P. Chandler throws light on the shadowy figure of Pol Pot. Basing his study on interviews and on a wide range of sources in English, Cambodian, and French, the author illuminates the ideas and behavior of this enigmatic man and his entourage against the background of post–World War II events, providing a key to understanding this horrific, pivotal period of Cambodian history.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Chandler, an emeritus professor of history at Monash University in Australia, is currently an adjunct Professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (October 20, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813309271
• ISBN-13: 978-0813309279
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,533,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As much info as you're going to get on Pol Pot, August 14, 2000

By 

P. Elkin "phil4000" (Frisco, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot (Paperback)

I salute David Chandler for finding as much information on Pol Pot as he did. There just isn't much out there, which is a great shame.

Chandler does a good job with what he's got. I can't fault the guy for his research or his conclusions. However, I never got any kind of sense of Saloth Sar/Pol Pot. What were his interests? What really motivated him? We'll never know.

The version of this book that I read was updated to include Nate Thayer's interview and the last years of Pol Pot's life (to the extent that anyone knows about it). I'm eager to read Thayer's book (which is nearly impossible to get ahold of).

I'm afraid that this is as good as there's going to be until a scholar in a Cambodian university takes on this project. There's way more information here than anywhere else that I've seen, but it's still pretty thin. I hope more comes to light on this important historical figure.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The way to make friends is not to kill people, September 5, 2003

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot (Paperback)

Prof. Chandler discovered the real face behind Pol Pot (Saloth Sar), the initially enigmatic leader of the Red Khmer in Cambodia. He wrote a hallucinatory and tragic biography.

The background of Pol Pot is common for many Communist Party (CP) members. He was recruited by the local CP when he studied in a foreign country. For Pol Pot, it was in France where the CP was totally controlled by the USSR and her Stalinist doctrine. The USSR recruited foreign members everywhere in order to use them as antennas all over the world.

When Pol Pot took power in Cambodia, he applied the Stalinist doctrine ruthlessly.
The similarities with Stalin are eminently striking: power struggle at the top of the party and liquidation of the old fellows, savage party purges, murderous goulags, indiscriminate collectivization, ethnic cleansing, deportation, show trials, forced confessions under torture, affectionate with little daughter, considering as enemies of the State those Khmer who came from a foreign country, fear of assassination, suspicious, dictatorial (didn't accept the slightest form of criticism).
Under Pol Pot, it went even so far that people who 'knew' an enemy where executed. The result: a genocide. Even children and BABIES were put to death.

David Chandler shows us that Pol Pot was really a dedicated communist, a party man, an organization man, a utopian thinker who believed in his killer's utopia till the end: "I did everything for my country".
A blatant lie: he did it only for his Khmer country and only for those Khmer who (were forced to) agree(d) with him. In other words, his utopia was more than nationalism, it was racism. For Pol Pot knew that 'Class and hatred had produced the victory. So hatred had to be maintained'.

This book contains excellent explanations of the background of the Cambodian conflict with Vietnam, and how Cambodia became a chess piece in a world conflict between the US, China and the USSR. Pol Pot's regime was supported by the US, because Cambodia was an enemy of Vietnam, who was an ally of the USSR.
This book stresses also the disastrous role of the feudalist king Norodom Sihanouk and the decisive influence of the US bombings of Cambodia, which turned part of the Khmer peasantry in favour of the Red Khmer.

Pol Pot's regime is a shame for Western intelligentsia, because some of his cronies (Khieu Samphan) studied like Pol Pot at Western universities.

This terrible biography is a reminder of the deadly dangers of utopian doctrines, if they can be implemented by a totally convinced individual who possesses a dictatorial power in a single ountry. As David Chandler states: the genocide would have continued, if Pol Pot had stayed in power.

A must read.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars best source of pol pot information, November 30, 1999

By 

Al Kihano (Iskandria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brother Number One: A Political Biography Of Pol Pot (Paperback)

...such as it is. The few known details of Pol POt's life can be found in this slim biography. Chandler's _The Tragedy of Cambodian History_ has better information on the Democratic Kampuchea movement in general, but if you're looking for the nitty gritty on this one person, this (to my knowledge) the only place to find it.

Unfortunately, _Brother Number One_ was written before the capture of Pol Pot and Nate Thayer's subsequent interview. Hence the modern period is neglected and a conscientious reader will have to seek out that information on his own.