A History of Cambodia [Paperback]

David Chandler (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813343631 | ISBN-13: 978-1578566969 | Publication Date: July 31, 2007 | Edition: Fourth Edition

In this clear and concise volume, author David Chandler provides a timely overview of Cambodia, a small but increasingly visible Southeast Asian nation. Praised by the Journal of Asian Studies as an “original contribution, superior to any other existing work,” this acclaimed text has now been completely revised and updated to include material examining the early history of Cambodia, whose famous Angkorean ruins now attract more than one million tourists each year, the death of Pol Pot, and the revolution and final collapse of the Khmer Rouge. The fourth edition reflects recent research by major scholars as well as Chandler’s long immersion in the subject and contains an entirely new section on the challenges facing Cambodia today, including an analysis of the current state of politics and sociology and the increasing pressures of globalization. This comprehensive overview of Cambodia will illuminate, for undergraduate students as well as general readers, the history and contemporary politics of a country long misunderstood.

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

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press; Fourth Edition edition (July 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813343631
• ISBN-13: 978-1578566969
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #130,388 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > History > Asia > Cambodia

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is what a history book ought to be, April 21, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: A History Of Cambodia 3E (Paperback)

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.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another masterpiece, now available in Khmer translation., June 23, 2000

By 

R. ARANT "Toun" (Lanesville, Indiana USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A History Of Cambodia 3E (Paperback)

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. [[e-mail] & www.khmerstudies.org]

33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Respectable Showing--Too Bad It's The Only One, June 2, 2000

By 

Bill Perez (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A History Of Cambodia: Second Edition, Updated (Paperback)

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.