March 10, 1999
Cambodia is a tropical nation in Southeast Asia roughly the size of the state of
Missouri, occupying 69,000 square miles and bordered by Vietnam, Thailand,
and Laos. Of its population of 10.56 million, 95 percent are Buddhist. Its capital
is Phnom Penh, with a population of more than 1 million. Other major cities are
Battambang, Siem Reap, Kompong Cham, Kompong Speu, and Kompong Thom.
Cambodia's central plain is drained by the Tonle Sap (Great Lake) and Mekong and Bassac Rivers. Heavy forests lie away from the rivers and lake. The Cardamon Mountains are ranged in the north and the Dangrek Mountains along the border with Thailand. Cambodia has a tropical monsoon climate with a rainy season from June into October and a dry season from November into May.
The Cambodian people are known as the Khmer, and make up 90 percent of the population. The balance are Chinese, Vietnamese, small numbers of hill tribes, Chams, and Burmese.
Adherents of Theravada Buddhism amount to 95 percent of the population. Islam and animism are also followed. In Cambodia, there are 38 United Methodist Church congregations with about 5,600 Christians. Working among the Cambodian Christians are United Methodists from churches in Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, France, and the United States.
Khmer is the official language, spoken by more than 95 percent of the population, including minorities. Some French is still spoken, a legacy of the former French colonial presence. English is increasingly popular as a second language. Cambodia's literacy rate is 35 percent.
Cambodia's natural resources are timber, gemstones, some iron ore, manganese and phosphate, and hydroelectric potential from the Mekong River. About 12 million acres of Cambodia are unforested and arable with irrigation, but less than half of that is cultivated. The country's agriculture produces rice, corn, meat, vegetables, dairy products, sugar, flour, and rubber. Industries include rice milling, fishing, wood and wood products, textiles, cement, and some rubber production.
During the same period that the peoples of Western Europe were absorbing Mediterranean cultural influences through conquest by the Roman Empire, the peoples of Southeast Asia were under a strong influence of the civilization that had emerged in northern India during the previous millennium. Indian religion, political thought, literature, mythology, and artistic motifs passed gradually into the local Southeast Asian cultures.
Cambodians consider Funan, the earliest of the Indianized states, to have been the first Khmer kingdom in the region. Founded in the 1st century A.D., Funan was on the lower reaches of the Mekong River in the delta area.
Funan reached its height in the 5th century A.D. Beginning in the early 6th century, civil wars and dynastic conflict undermined Funan, and it fell prey to incursions by hostile neighbors. By the end of the 7th century, the kingdom of Chenla, a northern neighbor, had reduced Funan to a vassal state. The Chenla people were also Khmer.
But in the 8th century, conflicts within the court led to a split of Chenla into rival northern and southern sections. The two parts were known as Land (or Upper ) Chenla and Water (or Lower) Chenla. Water Chenla came under attack late in the 8th century by pirates from Java, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula. After a period of vassalship under the Javanese, the Khmer people won liberation and in the early 9th century began to unify under the leadership of Jayavarman II (circa A.D. 802-50).
This marked the beginning of the golden age of Khmer civilization, the Angkorian period from the early 9th to the early 15th centuries. The great temple city complex of Angkor Wat, the world's largest religious edifice, is an enduring legacy of that age.
By the 15th century, however, Cambodia's golden age gave way to a dark age of economic, cultural, and social stagnation and increasing domination by the Thais and Vietnamese. This continued into the mid-19th century, when Cambodia, by then a mere pawn of its two neighbors, urged France to help.
In 1863, a French protectorate was set up, and by 1884 Cambodia was a virtual French colony. France soon made Cambodia part of the Indochina Union with Annam, Tonkin, Cochin-China, and Laos.
Even after the start of World War II, France continued to control Cambodia through the Vichy government. The Japanese in 1945 dissolved the colonial administration, and King Norodom Sihanouk proclaimed an independent, anti-colonial government under Prime Minister Son Ngoc Thanh in March 1945. But within two months of their victory over Japan, the Allies deposed this government in October 1945.
Although France recognized Cambodia as an autonomous kingdom within the French Union, Cambodia pressed to be free of France, and in 1954 was confirmed as fully independent. Cambodia adopted a foreign policy of neutrality during the 1950s and 1960s. But by the mid-1960s, the war in neighboring Vietnam propelled Cambodia toward what would be the darkest era in its history. This started when Communist North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces began using parts of Cambodia's eastern territory as bases for the fight against the South Vietnamese and their American allies.
In 1970, Prince Norodom Sihanouk was deposed in a United States-backed coup. This fueled civil war between the new military government and a Communist insurgency known as the Khmer Rouge. When a massive U.S. bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese bases in eastern Cambodia killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, support grew for the Khmer Rouge.
By 1973, the Khmer Rouge, which had grown strong through supplies and other military support from North Vietnam, was waging major battles against Cambodian government forces. They'd become increasingly independent of their Vietnamese patrons, and were in control of almost 60 percent of Cambodia's territory and 25 percent of its population. On New Year's Day 1975, the Khmer Rouge opened an offensive that culminated in the surrender of Phnom Penh on April 17th. The Khmer Rouge renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea.
In the ensuing "killing fields" period under their leader, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge amassed one of the worst human rights records in history. More than 2 million Cambodians--about one in five, died in the next four years from overwork, sickness, starvation, torture, or execution.
Immediately after its victory, the Khmer Rouge regime forced the evacuation of all cities and towns. They sent the entire urban population into the countryside to till the soil. Thousands starved or died of disease during the evacuation. Those who resisted or questioned orders were summarily executed, along with most military and civilian leaders from the former regime who failed to disguise their pasts.
In 1979, Cambodia's longtime enemy, Vietnam, invaded the country and drove the Khmer Rouge from power. In 1985, former Khmer Rouge cadre Hun Sen was made prime minister of the Vietnam-backed Cambodian government. Vietnamese troops withdrew from Cambodia in 1989, ending a decade of occupation.
Peace talks followed in Paris, and two years later, in October 1991, all Cambodian factions signed a peace accord. It gave the UN authority to prepare the country for elections. In May 1993, the UN supervised the country's first multiparty elections in 20 years. Prince Norodom Ranariddh's royalist Funcinpec won, but agreed to share power after Hun Sen threatened renewed civil war unless he was given a role in the government. The Khmer Rouge boycotted the elections and took to the battlefield.
The Khmer Rouge splintered during 1996 and 1997. Senior figure Ieng Sary defected with 10,000 guerillas, leaving loyalists isolated under his brother-in-law, Pol Pot. But the coalition was weakened as Ranariddh and Hun Sen argued over their power-sharing agreement and made rival moves for the loyalty of the former Khmer Rouge.
Then, in July 1997, Hun Sen ousted Ranariddh as co-premier, using tanks, mortars, and rockets in Phnom Penh. More than 100 of Ranariddh's supporters were killed. Ranariddh spent the next nine months in exile, but with international backing was allowed to return to take part in new elections.
On July 26, 1998, Cambodians voted in a U.N.-supervised election. Hun Sen's Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) was later declared the official winner over his two main rivals, Ranariddh and Sam Rainsy.
Four months later, in November 1998, Hun Sen and Ranariddh agreed to share power in a coalition government.
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Public Domain Map adapted from the Perry-Castaņeda Library Map Collection