Customer Reviews

A History Of Cambodia 3E

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Chandler presents a rather complete picture of the long history of Cambodia in about 250 pages. He's concise--what a blessing from a historian. He highlights the most important AND the most interesting details about each period in Cambodian history, and avoids the common problem of banality that many history books have. It's truly a good read, and an easy one, too. It's written in a very clear style--another of its strong points.

In sum, I am supplementing this book with one that deals exclusively with Cambodian history in the last 30 years, but for the "big picture," "A History of Cambodia" is The One. I couldn't be more impressed.

Those who are fascinated with Cambodia, the Khmer language and the Cambodian people treasure the work of David Chandler. Clear and logical presentation are to be taken for granted. The author has for years set the standard toward which the next generation of Asia scholars strive. Even more rare than his impressive intellect is David Chandler's collegial approach to his subjects and his fellow researchers.

The 2005 publication in the Khmer language is a beautiful piece of work done in a very crisp and legible Khmer font. The set in both English and Khmer will make the best study aid ever available for students of Khmer and for native speakers studying English. Very encouraging to see the American Embassy in Phnom Penh and the Van Waveren Foundation assist with funding this project. [publishing@khmerstudies.org & www.khmerstudies.org]

The coverage in this book is genuinely refreshing: from dim origins of the various ethnic and linguistic groups of Indochina; through the fascinating but frustratingly scant data on pre-Angkorean times; to the glory of Angkor itself; and then into the welcome light of more ample documentation, be it Chinese, European, Siamese or Vietnamese; and finally, of course, colonization, modern war, and the staggering horror of the Khmer Rouge. I believe that history--all history--is the mother of insight, and Chandler's work serves to bolster this opinion. Even the pre-Angkorean chapters--which, as I noted, are cursed by a paucity of evidence--fired my mind: I am now fascinated by the "indianization" of Southeast Asia that occurred in the first millenium AD. It struck me that it was one of the few times where a civilization spread its culture in a big way without either much violence or emigration. [Are there parallels with the contemporary global spread of American culture? True, American ascendance has not been without a torrent of violence--as amply recounted in this book--but I would submit that force has, if anything, hindered rather than advanced the adoption of American cultural norms.] This book is also a welcome antidote to the myriad histories of Southeast Asia that treat all the events before European colonization as the merest of preambles. We learn, for instance, that well before Cambodia became a disposable pawn in bloody post-war neo-imperialist games, it was long an important prize in a previous bipolar arena of gruesome geopolitical struggle--that between Vietnam and Siam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus the tragedy of modern Cambodia does not lie in Western, patronizing visions of the Cambodians as innocent children, but rather in the story of a wordly civilization that had endured and survived so many depradations from outsiders, only to all but self-destruct in our own time.

Professor Chandler is well-qualified to write a two-thousand-year Khmer history. I am amazed of what he knows about the details of the incidents throughout our history. The malevolence of the Vietnamese Emperor Minh Mang toward the Khmer race, the conquest of the Thai's kings (Rama I, II, III) to rule over the Khmer's territory and the struggle of the Khmer's kings to defend their shrinking empire from the two powerful neighboring countries are very well written in an utmost account of the Indochina's history, without bias or influence from anyone of the nations involved. The French Emperor Napoleon III's intervention that was requested by the Khmer king, Duang in 1853, saved Cambodia to this present day. But there were other serious disadvantages for the Khmer people from the French's colonization of Cambodia (1863-1954) that lost almost one half of the Cambodian territory to Vietnam in June 4, 1949 and France completely gave up Indochina in just five years later and the mistreatment to the Khmer people under their colonial rules. The selection of King Norodom Sihanouk by the Supreme Commander of Armed Forces of the Vichy government, Henri-Phillippe Patain, in April 1941 had great consequences and impacted the Khmer people in every walk of life in and outside Cambodia to this present day. It is fascinating to read A History of Cambodia with its grandeur whose people built the greatest and most beautiful religious monument of Angkor Wat in the world in the 1100s. Almost nine hundred years later Cambodia lost more than half of its territory to Vietnam and Thailand. In addition, the Khmer Rouge leaders became oblivious of the malicious plan by the North Vietnamese communists who have been carrying out the emperor's ridiculous plot, and they blindly slaughtered approximately two millions of its own people between 1975 and 1979. Ironically, the emperor's name means "retarded" in the Khmer language which is contradictory to his opinion of whatever his subjects told him about the nature of the Khmer people. I am very grateful to be alive to have gone through the most horrific regime of the Pol Pot's clique who was trained by the North Vietnamese communists as their puppets to further the Vietnam's conquest. Look at what they had done to Cambodia in the 1970s and their post-revolutionary era! The majority of the Khmer people continue to suffer a great deal as a result of their actions, greed and the Vietnamese's continuous intervention and influence over the Khmer's internal affairs. To learn more of what I experienced in the Khmer Rouge's regime as a young child and barely survived, read "When Slaves Became Masters" and you will fully understand of what went on inside the close-bordered Cambodia in the mid 1970s. Then you will know the root cause of the catastrophe during the Khmer Rouge regime that became so violent and cruel to the Khmer people who are often thought to be peaceful and compassionate as the Theravada Buddhists. I am very grateful to Professor Chandler who made the commitment with great difficulty and time-consuming efforts in writing and research for a book titles, A History of Cambodia. I highly recommend this book to everyone who is interested in reading the history of Southeast Asia for his/her pleasure, study, and work-related field or to better understand the Vietnam conflict which involved the death of 58,228 U.S. soldiers and servicemen who were deployed there in the 1960s to mid 1970s. I am currently reading Elizabeth Becker's book, "When the War Was Over."

This is the only book that I know of that tries to cover Cambodia history from pre Angkorean times until now in a comprehensive fashion. It does not give short shrift to the times before Europeans arrived, like most books on Asian history. The book is short, concise, to the point and a joy to read. It does not only focus on political structure, and dynastic successions, but give a very good effort to describe the development of religion, the identity, social norms, the relationship between the Monarch and sruks and the people. There are certain places where the Author's personal views are revealed however objective the book tries to be throughout. Nevertheless, the book gives a very good "feel" of the Cambodian nation as a people. Highly recommended.

"A History of Cambodia", covering a thousand years in 350 pages is quite an undertaking, and might lead one to believe that it was little more than a potted history. But this is an excellent book, well-written, with copious references to the deep work of historians -- both western and eastern -- about this complex culture in S.E. Asia.
Chandler's knowledge and understanding of Cambodia is always balanced between what is known about the elite, and what is inferred about common humanity in Cambodia. My only complaint is the treatment of the more recent history is somewhat skewed. He is reasonably well-balanced in his appraisal of King Norodom Sihanouk. His appraisal of Hun Sen seems somewhat naive. But, as Chandler points out, this is only a small chapter of Cambodian history, and he does it relatively well. What I like best is his balance between official history -- represented by the elites -- and his acknowledgment and consequent insights that the common voice is mostly missing from the historical record. He never forgets that what we know about ancient Khmer history is limited to official records and external observations by foreign visitors. The common man's story is mostly hidden.

For someone who wants to know more about this amazing place in SE Asia, this is a good beginning. It's especially useful if you have been to Cambodia several times, have seen some things, and now have some questions.

I like the book.

Many scholars write histories of countries not their own. Whether such histories are accepted in those second countries is another question. If you travel to Cambodia, you will see David P. Chandler's history of that country on every (English language) bookshelf, in stores and kiosks in every town. This may speak louder than my review as to the value placed on his book by the Cambodians themselves.

Cambodians, mostly by dint of their country's climate, did not leave a vast archive of records behind. Of the libraries that once graced Angkor's various sublime complexes, nothing remains. Palm leaf or paper soon rotted and disintegrated in the tropical weather. The only records we have are 1) what was written in stone, 2) the pictorial record on buildings like the Bayon, also carved in stone, and 3) very occasional records written by Chinese ambassadors or travellers. During the time when Khmer civilization was at its height, we do have a certain modicum of knowledge from these sources. As the Khmers weakened vis-à-vis their neighbors, the record peters out. So, reconstructing Cambodian history, from ancient times to the late 18th century, is like peering through a thick fog where figures come and go, a few lines are spoken but we are not sure of the context, and then the fog swirls once more. To write a coherent history, without over-speculation or exaggeration, sticking to what is known, but using geography, architecture, Indian and other Southeast Asian political examples, and language as supports for argument, is no easy task. It seems to me that Chandler succeeded brilliantly and the widespread presence of his book in Cambodia means that the Cambodians feel the same.

While information exists from the period of Khmer glory, after the decline began, around the 14th century, there is little to nothing available. Chandler does what he can. When Cambodia returns to recorded history---with European accounts and Vietnamese or Siamese records of their invasions and attempts to "straighten out" the Cambodians---the book becomes extremely interesting. The machinations of the various courts and the Vietnamese desire for "order" in a society where Chinese-style bureaucracy and administration was unknown underline themes that continued into the 20th century and indeed, into our own time. "Eating the peasants" has not really died out ! We can get the basic tenor of the French colonial rule, roughly 1863-1953, but discussion of this period left me wanting more. The connections between colonial rule, the renewed Cambodian monarchy, and the dissidents who partly turned into Khmer Rouge and partly into those who booted Sihanouk out in 1970, only to flee for their lives a few years later, were not as clear and incisive as the earlier chapters. Still, for a concise, interesting history of Cambodia, one which is no doubt the pre-eminent book in its field, you must read A HISTORY OF CAMBODIA.

P.S. I read the earliest edition which (as I should disclose) was signed by the author who was a friend and colleague back in the 1970s and '80s in Melbourne.

The chapters on Pol Pot were the best I've read about the Whys and Hows of the killing fields. The professorial arrogance of Pol Pot and his constant blaming of everyone, other than himself, for the failure of his idealized policies. He apparently believed Cambodia would be a Utopia, once his progressive policy were properly implemented and all the dissenters and saboteurs were removed.

This is a very succint but adequate history of Cambodia, which started some 2,000 years ago with the Funan empire (1st to 6th centuries AD) and reached its peak with the Khmer empire (9th to 13th centuries AD) and its famous Angkor monuments. From then on, it was a steep downward slide into oblivion.

One just has to wonder how such a brilliant civilization could have disappeared even from the minds and memory of its own people. A Frenchman, Henri Mouhot, rediscovered the Angkor complex in 1860.