Cambodia and the West, 1500-2000

229 Pages·2018·2.317 MB·English

by  T. O. Smith

Cambodia and the West
1500–2000
Edited by T. O. Smith
Cambodia and the West, 1500-2000
T. O. Smith
Editor
Cambodia and the
West, 1500-2000
Editor
T. O. Smith
Huntington University
Huntington, IN, USA
ISBN 978-1-137-55531-1 ISBN 978-1-137-55532-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55532-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017960190
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A
cknowledgements
I would like to express my deep felt gratitude to my dear late friend Dr
Larry Butler, Emeritus Reader in Imperial History at the University of
East Anglia (UEA), for his encouragement and support. Indeed, it was
Larry who, in commenting upon a separate publishing idea, first encour-
aged my production of an edited collection of essays concerning
Cambodia’s often troubled interaction with the West. If all academics
could be as generous with their time and as affirming in their correspon-
dence, then the profession would be infinitely better for it. The many
students that he inspired and the early career academics he mentored will
dearly miss him. Shalom.
Likewise, I owe a special note of thanks to a number of scholars and
independent researchers from several disciplines working in the broad field
of ‘Cambodia Studies’, who have shared contacts, and offered advice and
encouragement to myself and the chapter authors, in particular: Penny
Edwards (University of California, Berkley), Christopher Goscha
(University of Quebec at Montreal), Elizabeth Guthrie-Higbee (University
of Otago), Caroline Hughes (University of Bradford), Ben Kiernan (Yale
University), Colin Meyn (The Cambodia Daily), Gregor Muller (The
International Committee of the Red Cross), Milton Osborne (the Lowry
Institute), Tobias Rettig (an independent research scholar based in
Singapore), David Roberts (Loughborough University), Sebastian
Strangio (the Overseas Press Club of Cambodia), Martin Thomas
(University of Exeter) and John K. Whitmore (Research Associate, Center
for Southeast Asia Studies, University of Michigan).
v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am also deeply indebted to David Chandler, Emeritus Professor of
History at Monash University, for his guidance and support of this book
project. The final manuscript is certainly stronger for his friendship and
direction.
I would like to express my warmest thanks to all of the essay contribu-
tors for not only producing sterling chapters, but also assisting with other
issues and queries as needed. Indeed, when at the last minute one con-
tributor was forced to pull out of this project, Trude Jacobsen selflessly
stepped into the breach and produced a second chapter in order to meet
the publication deadline. Academia is increasingly fraught with family,
teaching and boorish-administrative burdens; thus it is a pleasure to be
able bring together a highly qualified and collegiate group of contributors
to work on a project much bigger than our own areas of research. To this
end, I also need to thank my wife, Elizabeth, for all of her sterling support
and encouragement.
Finally, I am extremely grateful to the editorial staff at Palgrave
Macmillan, especially Jenny McCall, Emily Russell, Carmel Kennedy and
Angharad Bishop, for all of their help (and patience) with the production
of this book. In addition, I would like to thank Palgrave Macmillan for
permission to include a slightly amended version of my chapter, ‘The
Sideshow: Cambodia 1945’ from within: T.O. Smith, Vietnam and the
Unravelling of Empire: General Gracey in Asia 1941–1951 (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2014), as Chap. 5 of this collection. The publisher and I would
also like to thank the following libraries, archives and copyright holders for
permission to use material within Chap. 5: the trustees of the Liddell Hart
Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, University of London; the
Mountbatten Archives, University of Southampton Library; the Middle
Eastern Centre Archives, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.
Similarly, the publisher and I would like to thank Northern Illinois
University Press (http://www.niupress.niu.edu/niupress/) for permis-
sions regarding Chap. 6. The author of this chapter drew on some of the
material from his book, Troubled Relations: The United States and
Cambodia since 1870, by Kenton Clymer, Copyright ©2007 Northern
Illinois University Press. (Troubled Relations is an abridged and updated
edition of the author’s earlier two volume account published by Routledge).
In addition, the publisher and I would like to express our gratitude for the
use of photograph two in chapter one. This is included with the permis-
sion of the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Archaeological Centre, Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies, Singapore, David Kyle Latinis staff archaeologist and
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT S vii
photographer (https://www.iseas.edu.sg/centres/nalanda-sriwijaya-cen-
tre). I am very grateful to all of the copyright holders who have supported
the use of information and quotation from their archives or publications
in the chapters contained within this edition.
c
ontents
1 C ambodia and the West: An Introduction 1
T. O. Smith
2 The Coming of the West: European Cambodian
Marketplace Connectivity, 1500–1800 7
Kenneth R. Hall
3 Cambodia in the Nineteenth Century: Out of the Siamese
Frying Pan and into the French Fire? 37
John Tully
4 Cambodia in French Indochina, 1900–1945 65
Trude Jacobsen
5 A British Interlude: Allied Peace Enforcement, 1945–1947 87
T. O. Smith
6 I ndependence to Disaster, 1945–1975 115
Trude Jacobsen
ix
x CONTENTS
7 The United States and Cambodia, 1960–1991 147
Kenton Clymer
8 C ambodia and the United Nations 1980–2000 (and
Beyond) 177
Fergal Quinn and Kevin Doyle
Index 211
n c
otes on ontributors
Kenton Clymer is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department
of History, Northern Illinois University. He has been a fellow at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC
and has held Fulbright lectureships at Silliman University in the Philippines,
the University of Indonesia, and Renmin University in Beijing. He is the
author of seven books, three of which trace the history of US relations
with Cambodia. Clymer’s two-volume history of US relations with
Cambodia (2004) won the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize from the Society
for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2005. His most recent
book is A Delicate Relationship: The United States and Burma/Myanmar
since 1945 (2015).
Kevin Doyle was based in Cambodia between 1991 and 1993 and from
1999 to 2015. He has been the editor-in-chief of The Cambodia Daily
newspaper and a Reuters news agency correspondent in Phnom Penh. His
work has featured in TIME magazine and many other international news
organisations including Al Jazeera and the BBC. A Nieman Fellow at
Harvard University from 2010 to 2011, he is currently pursuing PhD
research at Dublin City University, Ireland, focused on social media and
democracy in Southeast Asia.
Kenneth R. Hall is Professor of History at Ball State University. He spe-
cialises in the comparative study of pre-1800 Indian Ocean maritime trade
networks, and histories of India, Southeast Asia, and comparative Asian
and non-Western societies and culture. He does crossover research in
archaeology (currently working on archaeological sites in Cambodia and
xi