The history of Cambodia has been very eventful

The history of Cambodia shows that before 1000 BC Cambodians lived in houses on stilts (as they do today) and lived on large quantities of fish and rice.

From the 6th century, Cambodia’s population gradually concentrated along the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers (as is today)

Going back in the history of Cambodia to the Angkorian Period – in AD 802, Jayavarman ll participated in a ritual that proclaimed him a god king. He was the first of a long succession of kings who presided over Southeast Asia that was to leave the stunning legacy of Angkor. It was here in the Angkorian Period, that the first indications of an overworked and overstrained people also started to show. After Jayavarman Vll, temple construction came to a halt.

From 1600 in the history of Cambodia until the arrival of the French in 1863, Cambodia was ruled by a series of weak kings. During the next 2 decades, the door was opened to French power. Independence was proclaimed on 9 November 1953, which ended French control of Indochina. King Sihanouk, last in a long line of Angkor’s god kings, first nicknamed the indigineous Cambodian revolutionary movement, the Khmer Rouge – this was a defined movement in Cambodian history.

In 1969 the USA had begun a secret programme of bombing suspected communist base camps in Cambodia. Bombing was halted in August 1973, when huge areas of the eastern half were carpet-bombed, killing uncounted thousands of civilians and turning hundreds of thousands into refugees. Some believe more than 250 000 Cambodians may have been killed. The ferocity of these bombings may have helped to the growing brutality of the Khmer Rouge regime. Savage fighting engulfed the entire country – between 1970 and 1975 several hundred thousand people died in the fighting.

When the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh (capital of Cambodia) , it implemented a radical and brutal restructuring of a society. Within 2 weeks of them coming to power, the entire population of the capital and provincial towns, including the sick and elderly, was forced to march out to the countryside and undertake slave labour in mobile work teams – preparing the fields, digging irrigation canals, for 12 to 15 hours a day. Disobedience brought immediate execution. The beginning of Khmer Rouge rule was proclaimed Year Zero. Except for one fortnightly flight to Beijing (China was providing aid and advisers to the Khmer Rouge) the country was cut off from the outside world.

Pol Pot (born Saloth Sar), Brother no 1 in the Khmer Rouge regime, is most associated with the bloody madness of the country’s rule between 1975 – 1979 , and his policies heaped misery, suffering and death on millions of Cambodians. When the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, few people could have anticipated the hell that was to come. Pol Pot was the architect of one of the most radical and brutal revolutions in the history of mankind. The Khmer Rouge detached the Cambodian people from all they held dear; their families, their food, their fields and their faith.

Pol Pot spent most of his time in Phnom Penh, paranoid about his security and granting almost no interviews to foreign media. Nobody cared for the Khmer Rouge by 1978, but nobody had an ounce of strength to do anything about it …….except the neighbourly Vietnamese. It was the Vietnamese that turned out to be his greatest enemy, invading Cambodia on 25 December 1978 and overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government on 7 January 1979. Pol Pot and his supporters were sent fleeing to the jungle. He passed away in 1998, and many Cambodians refused to believe this, so scared were they of his reign of terror. Only when they saw his body on television, were they convinced ………..

As for the history of Cambodia in the 1980s, it remained closed to the Western world. Government policy was under the control of the Vietnamese, so Cambodia found itself very much in the Eastern-bloc camp. Students were made to learn Russian and many studied in cities like Moscow, Prague and Warsaw.

Today, many Cambodians want to see the Khmer Rouge Leadership put on trial for the genocide history of Cambodia, but there are many politicians, both within Cambodia and abroad, that don’t. Also, it is a delicate matter, because Cambodians are now at peace, for the first time in 30 years.

The Cambodian people deserves justice after so much suffering, but it could be argued that the nation could do better served by a truth commission that cleanses the nation’s soul without seeking revenge!!`

Return from History of Cambodia to Home Page