From 13th century Chinese traders, to 16th century

Spanish diplomats and 19th century French colonialists,

Phnom Penhs expats have been behaving badly since
they arrived. Michael Sloan delves into the history
books and looks at what life was like for expats past.

In 1869, Jean Moura the

administrator of the French protectorate in Cambodia wrote bitterly
in a letter about the pitiable reputation of
Phnom Penhs European community and
their filthy affairs.
Less than six years had past since the
French signed a treaty with King Norodom I to
preserve and protect Cambodia and its population, which included a community of around
300 European expats living in Phnom Penh.
With a population of roughly 50,000,
the capital at that time stretched from the
banks of the Tonle Sap to Norodom Boulevard. The majority of the European population, mainly French, German and English,
lived along the Grand Rue - the main boulevard that stretched along the riverside from
Wat Phnom to the Royal Palace.
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In the eyes of early colonial authorities,

everything from their houses, recreational
habits, and especially marriage to local partners, was a potential threat to the French
colonial order.

French Colonialism

In his 2006 book Colonial Cambodias

Bad Frenchmen, Gregor Muller sketches
the dim view French officials took of the
existing European community at the start
of the protectorate - a view also shared by
some of the citys local inhabitants.
One poison pen letter sent anonymously
by a Cambodian to a French official in
1872 lays out the local reputation and peccadilloes of almost every foreign inhabitant of Phnom Penh at the time, including
Teacher Pelletier who gets drunk and
never sees the light of day and Rosenthal, always drunk, yelling the whole night
with his harem of women.
For officials like Moura, seeing Europeans living with, doing business with and
quarelling with local inhabitants was a
threat to French prestige - especially while,
writes Muller, after years of successive
failure one could see them borrowing from
their Chinese neighbours to be able to
afford a meal.

Foreign Feuds

Muller writes that some expats like sawmill

owner Paul Le Faucheur, the Kings translator
Arthur Rosenthal and brothel owner Ibrahim
Roy Sulivan lived well. But colonial society
also had its fair share of washed-up Europeans chasing illusory business schemes.
Among the most infamous of these early
European expats was Frederic Thomas-Caraman, a self-proclaimed French count who
relocated to Cambodia in 1865 to pursue a
number of failed ventures including crisscrossing Cambodia with railroads and growing cotton along the banks of the Mekong.
Caramans various feuds with other expats,
royal officials and rival Chinese merchants
alone takes up more than half the time of the
Representative of the Protectorate, wrote
Representative Moura in the 1870s.
His case was only one in a long line,
according to Muller, of the motely crew of
barely literate would-be merchants living below the poverty line to arrive in Cambodia.
The problem of policing the behavior of
Phnom Penhs growing expat community
was a constant headache for French officials, which Moura and later administrators tried to solve by hiring them to work
as police officers and clerks and launching
morality crackdowns on opium dealing and
interracial marriages.

Spanish Explorers

But the misdeeds of the French protectorate were not the first illustrations of expats
letting loose.
Almost 300 years before Moura criticised
the moral character of Phnom Penhs Europeans, a similar note of discomfit was sounded
by Spanish explorer Juan Juarez de Gallinato.
He led the countrys first diplomatic mission
to Phnom Penh, a city known by the Spanish
as Chudamarco, in 1596.
Fully expecting to be greeted with fanfare,
he found that the presence of several Portuguese friars at the royal court meant that
new European visitors were regarded with
little interest.
Instead attention was showered on a
donkey they brought with them which
was valued above all our gifts of gold
and struck the natives with amazement,
according to a 1604 book describing the
trip penned by Dominican friar Garbriele
Quiroga de San Antonio.
While the presence of Chinese, Malay
and Siamese merchants in Cambodia had
been reported as early as the 13th century
by Chinese envoy Chou Ta-Kuan, Gallinatos account is the first to record the
presence of a permanent community of
Europeans based in Cambodia.
Among the Europeans living at the royal

court was the Portuguese mercenary Diego

Bellosa, who settled in the Kingdom a decade
before Gallinato arrived, and married a cousin
of the King, and Friar Silvestre who grasp of
Khmer made him a favourite at court.
Characterising Cambodias population as
more good hearted that the natives of other
kingdoms, Gallinato urged Spain to invade
the Kingdom as part of a plan to open to us
the priceless wealth of the kingdom of Laos
and then set out to do just that.

Quick Escape

The resulting series of accidents, massacres and diplomatic disasters that followed,
resulted in Gallinato and his men fleeing the
kingdom in 1598, pursued onto their ships by
an angry mob.
Forced to leave behind their donkey which
brayed and showed much affliction as
though it were saying goodbye, Gallinato
sailed off into the sunset cursing Chudamarco
as a place where no good Christian would
ever wish to reside.
Given todays thriving expat population,
some of whom are still behaving badly, it
seems he was mistaken.
Colonial Cambodias Bad Frenchmen: The rise of
French Rule and the life of Thomas Caraman, 184087 is available at Bohrs books.
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