The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

1


The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century in Cambodia

I. The Imposition of Vietnamese Control :

According to the restoration of Eng in 1794 is treated in the
Cambodian chronicles as an event of miraculous significance when
he left Bangkok, they assert," the sky did not grow dark, nor
did rain fall; however,thunder boomed in the noon sky, marking a
noise like a mighty storm. the restoration was indeed dramatic,
for in the preceding fifteen years Cambodia had not been
governed at all, a former official name Baen had been installed
in Udong by the Thai, had been given the title of Ta-La-Ha, or
first minister, and had busied himself with recruiting troops to
fight the Tay-Son inside Cambodia and in Vietnam, in 1794, after
so many years of service, Rama I seems to have felt obliged to
reward him in some way.The reward he chose to bestow, however,
was hardly his to give ,as it consisted of the large and
prosperous Srok of Battambong and Mahanokor (or Great City"
containing the ruins of Angkor") Baen had held power in this
region for part of the 1780s and probably retained a personal
following there, but in awarding the two Srok to him, Rama, I
removed them from Eng's jurisdiction without absorbing them into
Siam, in the 1790s and for most of the nineteenth century, Thai
suzerainty seems to have meant only that Baen and his successors
were not obligated to provide labours for Eng and had to
transmit gifts- generally wild cardamom- to Bangkok from time to
time.Detail about the transfer are impossible to uncover, and
perhaps documents were never drawn up, in the 1860s, in fact, a
French official in Cambodia seeking information about the Thai
claims, recorded to his superiors that (Siam) is unable to
present any documentation about the cession, the present King of
Cambodia ( Eng's grandson Norodom) his officials old men who
have been consulted, and Eng's widow, who is still alive, are
all of the opinion that none exists.



The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

2



In the twentieth century , however, the the loss, of the two
Srok poisoned Thai-Cambodian relations Siam gave them up under
pressure from France in 1907 but resumed control over most of
their territory from 1941 to 1946, in the context of 1790s,
however, it is unlikely that Rama I was pursuing a long-rang
plan, and his Grandson, Rama IV, put the matter succinctly when
he wrote that, the Thai Kingdom was able to enlarge itself(at
this time) because it had the greater power. After building him-
selves a Palace in Udong and visiting Bangkok with a tributary
mission in 1796 Eng died at the beginning of 1797, his Reign had
been uneventful, and his contributions to Cambodian history were
almost inadvertent, by returning to Udong, which had been
without a King for so long, he brought Cambodia back to life, by
fathering four sons, he founded a dynasty that was to Reign in
Udong and Phnompenh until 1970, these two contributions rather
than specific actions on his part, probably account for the
reverence with which he is treated in Cambodian chronicles
compiled for his descendants. The next ten years, until his son
Chan's coronation in 1806, are poorly documented, but for
reasons that remain unclear, the young prince became alienated
from the Thai court at some point and seems to have begun to
formulate a pro- Vietnamese foreign policy, what ever its causes
Thai sources hint at a feud between the young prince and Rama ,
I- Chan anti- Thai orientation is a present theme of his long
Reign.











The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

3


As soon as he had been Crowned, for example, he hastened to
strengthen Cambodia's tributary connections with Vietnam while
maintaining his subservience to Bangkok, becoming, in the words
of the Vietnamese emperor, an independent country that is the
slave of two. the process was even more complicated for Chan's
increasing animosity toward the Thai alienated some of his own
Chaovay-Srok especially in the northwest,and his personal
insecurity is indicated by his request to the Vietnam
emperor at about his time that he be allowed to recruit
Vietnamese residents of Cambodia to from his personal bodyguard,
the pace of his alienation from Bangkok accelerated after Rama.
I' death in 1809, Chan refused to attend the ceremony showed
signs of being pro-Thai, Chan had them executed without trail.
in 1811 to 1812 conflict broke out inside Cambodia between Thai
and Vietnamese, expeditionary forces, the Thai supported one of
Chan's dissident brothers. the Vietnamese responded to Chan's
request for help all three of Chan's brothers fled to Bangkok at
this time, leaving him free for the rest of his Reign to pursue
a pro Vietnamese policy, even though the campaigns of 1811-
1812, were indecisive, their net effect was to reduce Chan's
freedom of action, as his growing dependence on the Vietnamese
was greater than his former allegiance, so reluctantly given, to
Bangkok. twice a month, wearing Vietnamese bureaucratic costumes
supplied by Hue', the King and his entourage had to visit a
moved in 1812- and bow before a tablet bearing the Vietnamese
emperor's name over the next twenty years, Chan fought with
decreasing success to achieve a modicum of independence.
Three events stand out from these early years of relatively
loose Vietnamese control, these are the unsuccessful Cambodian
attack on the Northwestern Srok in 1816, the excavation of the
Vinh Tre Canal in Southern Vietnam,using Cambodian labor, around
1820, and the anti-Vietnamese uprising that broke out soon
afterward in Southeastern Cambodia and in Khmer-populated
portions of Vietnam.



The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

4



The military expedition of 1816 was the last attempt before
the 1960s, by normally constitution Cambodian army to take the
offensive against foreign troops, and it was a failure, perhaps
to placate the Thai, or merely because the campaign had failed,
Vietnamese authorities in Phnompenh asked Chan to discipline the
Oknha who had led the expedition,taken to Saigon afterward, the
official was reprimanded and fined, the sequence of events,
although not significant in itself, epitomized Chan's
helplessness in face of Vietnamese pressure.


II. Cambodias Relations with Vietnam and Siam :

Based on the research, we can relieved that there were 2 main
characters of the post-Angkorean Cambodia were the shift in the
country's center of gravity from Angkor to Phnompenh, with the
commercial and demographic ramification that the move implied,
and the roles played by the Thai and Vietnam, nineteenth century
Cambodia, therefore, must be seen in part against the back
ground if its foreign relations. These relations were carried
out with two countries, Vietnam and Siam ,and occurred within a
framework of rivalry between the two larger Kingdom, rivalry
sprang from the unwillingness of either court, to accept the
other as equal or superior, this unwillingness, in turn ,can be
traced in part to the traditional language of tributary
diplomacy, which stressed the inequality between the sender and
recipient of tribute. A major objective of Southeast Asian
diplomacy in the nineteenth century, in deed, was the ritualized
expression of differential status through the ceremonial
exchange of gifts, the rules for these tributary exchanges grew
out of the particular system in which they occurred, the Thai
and the Vietnamese, for example, had separate ones, which
overlapped inside Cambodia.



The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

5


Both system owed a good deal to their counterpart in China,
which had been in effect since the third century Bc and was
still operation in the 1800s, from a Cambodian point of view ,
the Thai variant was looser and more idiosyncratic, for the Thai
made allowance for local customs and local products, the
Vietnamese did not, the latter were rigid in copying the Chinese
model, in 1806, for example, Vietnamese emperor Gia-long, in
choosing gifts to send to the Cambodian King, transmitted
facsimiles of ones he had received, at the beginning of his own
Reign, from the Chinese emperor. some of these, like "Golden
Dragon paper for imperial decrees" and Chinese bureaucratic
costumes were meaningless to the Khmer, the seals of investiture
sent from Hue' to Udong were irrelevant to Cambodians because
they had camels carved on them. like the seals that the Chinese
court sent to tributary states in central Asia and,incidentally,
to Vietnam, one puzzled Cambodian chronicler referred to animal
as a "Chinese-Lion".

From Vietnam's point of view , Vietnam was ":Above" Cambodian
, just as China was "above" Vietnam, at the same time, of course
, Cambodia was below, Vietnam and Vietnam was below China, in
other words, Vietnam was the master in one relationship and the
servant in the other, as a by product of this duality, the
Civilized" goods sent from Hue' to Udong were facsimiles of
those sent from Beijing to Hue' while" Barbarian, goods
transmitted from Udong were the same sorts of products that
Vietnam transmitted to China. After 1810. King Chan and his
advisers were swept up into a game of power politics that they
had a little chance to change and no opportunity to win, they
had no choice, in Vietnamese terms ,Cambodia was a Fence, a
buffer state and a dumping-ground for colonist, to the Thai, the
Cambodians were fellow- Buddhist" Children" basking in a fund of
Chakrey-merit. who could provide cardamom for the court and
manpower for Chakrey wars, the Thai wanted the Cambodians to be
loyal,the Vietnamese wanted Cambodia's land and, incidentally,
its recognition of their superiority the Thai demanded service
and friendship,but they were usually unable-given the way they
The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

6


organizedtheir armies and the distance between Bangkok and
Phnompenh,to provide protection.
The Vietnamese , on the other hand, provided protection of a
sort ,but their actions led to the disappearance of Cambodia as
an independent state, by different routes, then, the Thai and
the Vietnamese often came to do the same things, taking over
certain Srok making hostages of the ruler and his relations, and
curtailing the independence of the Oknha.

To Chan and his advisers, the outcome of this game was
probably not obvious at first, in the early part of his
Reign,his alliance with Vietnam was probably meant only to
deflect some of the pressures on him from the Thai, letters took
so long between Bangkok, Udong, and Hue' that Chan was able to
buy time on several occasions by saying one thing to the Thai
and another to the Vietnamese, moreover, for most of his Reign,
he kept his communications open with both capitals by means of
the embassies he sent them, in fact Chan may well have been
under the impression that the equilibrium that prevailed in the
early years of his Reign was his own creation and that he had
more bargaining power with his patrons than he really did, even
if the balance of forces and the inactivity of the Thai and the
Vietnamese reflected Thai ans Vietnamese choice dictated by
their own perceptions of national interest and even if
Cambodia's independence reflected what were for the moment
limited Thai and Vietnamese ambitions rather than Cambodian
skill, there were still advantages to Chan in blurring the lines
of his allegiance, one of the chronicle, allegedly quoting
Emperor Gia-Long, makes this point quite clear.
The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

7


III. The Vietnamization of Cambodia :

When Chan returned to his battered, abandoned capital in early
1834,he found himself under more stringent Vietnamese control,
Thai successes in their overland offensive had shown Minh Mang
that he could not rely on the Khmer to provide a "Fence" for his
southern and Western borders, and with the defeat of the
rebellion, he now moved to intensify and consolidate his
control, to head this civilizing mission,he named the general
who had crushed the rebellion in Saigon,Truong Minh Giang

Giang needed Chan and his officials to provide the Vietnamese
with labor ,rice,and soldiers, Chan to have needed the
Vietnamese somewhat less in material terms, but probably counted
on them to protect him from assassination and revolt, like later
outsiders operating in Cambodia, Giang probably expected too
much from the King Oknha before 1834 was over, he had reported
pessimistically to Hue' that.

Giang's impatience was understandable, for Cambodian politics
at the time was characterized by a diffusion of power, a
shortage of resources and a negotiability of position that
effectively kept anyone from becoming powerful for very long,
That Cambodians should hesitate to accomplish tasks for the
Vietnamese struck Giang as insulting, even treacherous, but
Minh-Mang urged him to do the best he could with the human
materials at hand. Bodin, in the meantime, had settle his force
in the Northwest,as the 1830s,wore on,the Thai increased
their military presence in Battambong and Siam reap. placing Im
and Duang in ambiguous administrative control, presumably to
attract indigenous support against the Vietnamese, these program
was matched to the south and East by an intensive program of
Vietnamization, which affected many aspects of Cambodian life,
the program was set in motion in 1834 and played itself out
under the threat of Thai invasions for the rest of the 1830s the
last years of Ming Mang's Reign.

The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

8



An early victim of Vietnamization was Chan himself, toward the
end of 1834 according to the Vietnamese annals, he came under
the influence of ' magicians" who allegedly encouraged him to
accept bribes and "let criminals out of jail.
In a sense the magicians, were merely asking Chan to act like a
traditional King, but their influence distressed Truong Minh
Mang, who had them arrested and shot, for Chan himself, the end
of his struggle to stay alive and provide for himself and his
people a modicum of independence had arrived, in early 1835,
after a month's illness, he died abroad his royal barge, moored
opposite his ruined Palace in Phnompenh, he was forty-four years
old, and he had Reigned, in one way or another, for nearly forty
years. Chan's death posed problems for the Vietnamese,for he had
no sons and his eldest daughter, Princess Baen ,was suspected of
being pro- Thai,soon after his death,the Oknha agreed to
Vietnamese suggestion that Chan's second daughter, Princess
Mei,be named as queen,to officiate at her investiture Ming Mang
sent a Vietnamese official from Saigon, and in a hall built
specially for the purpose, Mei and her sisters faced North,
toward the emperor's letter authorizing her to Reign, while the
Vietnamese delegate and other officials faced South, as the
emperor always did in his Palace in Hue'.

Chan's brother Duang had been living in Battombang for several
years, under Thai protection, and an obscure sequence of events
in 1837 culminated in his arrest by the Thai and his return in
chains to Bangkok. The sources suggest that Vietnamese
emissaries from Phnompenh had tried to lure him down to the
capital with promises that he could be given the throne, Duang's
replies to them were so ambiguous as to convince both the Thai
and the Vietnamese that he intended to betray them, using Oknha
in the Capital region to gather supporters in an effort to
regain Chan's somewhat dubious independence.



The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

9


The Vietnamese also had problems moving troops and supplies
against the river currents prevalent at the time of year, and
the report adds that " not even one" rebel had surrendered,
despite the 'tolerant' policies of the Vietnamese court and even
though the record is full of references to the Khmer fleeing
like 'Rat and mice" or attacking like swarms of mosquitoes" at
the start of rebellion, Minh Mang ( who was to die following an
accident at the beginning of 1841) thought that an adequate
application of force, combined with rewards to loyal troops and
local officials, would be enough to put down the rebellion,
which angered him, he wrote, so much that his "hair stood on
end",he ordered ta-la-ha-lung and others to write letters asking
their relatives and clients in Cambodia to surrender, thus mis-
reading Cambodian loyally to un-available and devalued patrons,
and he also approved sending' monks and magicians, into
Phnompenh to undermine morale, in the last months of his Reign,
he demanded weekly reports from the front and suggested that
Cambodian crops and orchards be burned down as a preemptive
measure,'The Cambodians are so stupid he declared" that we must
frighten them, ordinary moral suasion has no effect. It is
impossible to say what Minh Mang would have done had he survived
the next seven years, but it is clear that the rebellion had
begun to lose momentum before his death and that his successor,
Thieu Tri, was less committed than he had been to a victory in
Cambodia, the new emperor began his Reign looking for a solution
that would be acceptable to his court and to be Cambodians,of
not necessarily to the Thai, at one stage, he brushed aside
a suggestion that he negotiate directly with the Thai as being,
Wrong and foolish" distance, distrust, and the momentum of the
war, however as well as the ambiguity of Thieu Tri' objectives
in Cambodia, kept the conflict going until 1847.





The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

10


Despite Vietnamese reports to the contrary Cambodian troops
were often poorly supplied, at the end 1840, a rebel Oknha
complained to the Thai that" we are unable to continue fighting
the Vietnamese, we lack the troops to do so, the rifles, the
ammunition, and the supplies for weapons we have only knives,
cross-bows,and clubs we cannot continue to fight"
The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

11


IV. The Restoration of Cambodia :

Due to the court of Vietnamese in Cambodia sought a solution
to what they saw as an internal Vietnamese problem, Chaophraya
Bodin's expeditionary force, numbering thirty-five thousand men,
assembled near Battambang and then attacked and defeated the
Vietnamese garrison at Pursat, Bodin was prepared to attack the
capital but hesitate because he was short of supplies and lacked
confidence in his troops instead he withdrew to Battambang,
where he sought to consolidate his political position, during
the siege of Pursat,eighteen rebellious Oknha had written him
pleading for Thai support and for Duang's return from Bangkok,
the Oknha pledge allegiance to Rama III, complained about
shortages of supplies, and asserted That Cambodians would be
happy only if the political conditions of the early nineteenth
century, before the Vietnamese had arrived, were re-established.
Bodin transmitted the letter to Bangkok and added a
recommendation for Duang's release from Custody and his return
to political power,in January 1841,Duang reached Battambang,
accompanied by Thai and Cambodian advisers and carrying gifts
for his supporters, including insignia of rank and royal
accoutrement's provide for him and Rama II according to one
source, Bodin had urged Duang's release because"If there are no
superior people to took after a population, the common people
have no security" the records alsosuggest that Bodin's motives
included winning over the Oknha (he was eager that local Khmer,
rather than his own inexperienced troops, should engage the
Vietnamese)by promising them that Duang would ruler over
Cambodia, for the rest of the 1840s, Duang was to be closely
watched and manipulated by Bodin. Duang's return to Cambodia and
Rama III's solicitude for him opened an era in Thai-Cambodian
relations that lasted until French intervention in 1863. While
Duang was conferring with potential courtiers and Bodin was
complaining that the newcomers were consuming Thai supplies,
Thieu Tri was attempting to understand and control Vietnamese
policy toward Cambodia, with a view to thwarting a Thai
invasion, pacifying rebellious provinces of Southern Vietnam,
The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

12


and retaining Vietnamese prestige, in late 1841s, Truong Minh
Giang attempted once again to bring Prince Im to power, but
edicts in his name attracted no support, it was at this point,
perhaps that Truong Minh Giang (Trng Minh Ging) realized
that he had almost no chance of restoring a favorable political
balance in Cambodia, he withdraw to Vietnamese, talking Im, the
Princesses, and the population of the City, numbering some six
thousand people, with him,when he arrived in Vietnam, he sent a
letter to Hue' in which he took the blame for"losing" Cambodia,
to which he referred as emperor's rightful property" he then
took poison and died. The Vietnamese failure did not mean that
the Thai had succeeded and by 1843 Cambodia had become a
quagmire for Chaophraya Bodin, as he wrote Bangkok" we have been
in Cambodia for three years without accomplishing anything ,we
are short of supplies, people are going off into the forest to
live on leaves and roots and nearly a thousand men in our army
have died from lack of food",in 1844, he had to abandon
Phnompenh, where the Vietnamese soon reinstalled Princess Mei as
Cambodia's "Legitimate Queen" while Thai force congregated near
Udong, the Vietnamese maneuver infuriated Bodin, who saw that
many Oknha might now be unwilling to support the Thai, he
complained to Bangkok that " all the Khmer Leader and nobles,
all the district chiefs and all the common people are ignorant,
stupid foolish and gullible, they have no idea what is true and
what is false".

In spite of these difficulties , Vietnamese attempts to
dislodge the Thai forces around Udong throughout 1845 were
fruitless by the end of the year, the Thai and Vietnamese opened
negotiations for a cease-fire, the talks moved forward, for they
were grounded in Thieu-Tri' willingness to abandon his military
positions in Cambodia and by implication, his father's policies
there, they moved slowly,however ,in a context of military
stalemate, even though in political terms conditions were
favorable to the Thai, in Prince Duang they had a seasoned,
popular ruler loyal to Bangkok and able to work through a well
established network of loyal officials in the Srok, but the
The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

13


Vietnamese still occupied a strong bargaining position,
particularly as they retained Cambodia's regalia, without which
Duang could not legitimately ascend the throne.

In a face-saving gesture they demanded that a tributary
mission headed by a Cambodian official travel to Hue' in March
1846 and declare Cambodia 's pro form subservience to
Vietnamese, when the embassy returned to Phnompenh in June 1847,
the Vietnamese handed over the Cambodian regalia and released
several members of royal family who had been in their custody,
in some cases for many years, soon afterward, they withdrew
their force from Cambodia, for the first time since 1811, there
were no Vietnamese official on Cambodia soil. Over the next few
months, in a series of ceremonial gestures, Duang reenacted the
restoration of Thai sponsored Kingship that had been eclipsed
for so many years, it would be mistake to dismiss these
ceremonial actions as mere protocol,because Duang ,like most
Southeast Asian rulers at the time, did not disentangle what we
would call the religious and political strands of his thinking,
duties , and behavior and political actions were thought to
enhance or diminish a monarch's fund of merit. On an auspicious
day in April 1848. Duang was anointed by Thai and Cambodian
Brahmans in Udong and ascended the Cambodian Throne, he was
Fifty-two years old, and his Reign, which lasted twelve years
,can be seen as a Cambodian renaissance, for most of these
years, the Kingdom was at peace, and although Thai political
advisers and some Thai troops lingered at Udong, Duang was
relatively free to make political decisions, such as those
connected with awarding title to Oknha, The Chronicles of his
Reign place much emphasis on its restoratives aspects, a wide
range of institutions and relationships was involved, the
Chronicle points to linguistic reforms, public works, sumptuous
laws, and new sets of royal titles, from other sources, we know
that Duang was an accomplished poet and presided over the
promulgation of a new law code and the Compilation of new
Chronicle histories.

The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

14



Duang seems to have sought French help not so much to escape
Thai protection, which would have been impossible to manage, as
to defend himself against the Vietnamese, in letters to the
French, he referred to them, as Pol-Pot was to do in the 1970s
as Cambodia's "traditional enemies" Ironically , in the 1860s,
France took over Vietnamese patronage of Cambodia, eliminated
Vietnamese influence, and then proceeded to encourage Vietnamese
immigration into Cambodia, after his tempt to make friends with
French had failed, Duang explained himself to a French
missionary, saying" what would you have me do? I have two
masters who always have an eye fixed on me, they are my
neighbors, and France is far a way." Clearly, many conditions
had to change before Cambodian could emerge from this dual
dependency, which had lasted with brief interludes for more than
fifty years.
The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century 1

15



Reference

An, S. (2012, 12 29). Cambodia And Society. Retrieved 4 14, 2014, from
http://som-ang.blogspot.com/2012_12_23_archive.html
Chandler, D. (n.d.). A History of CAMBODIA.