Five of the 11 countries in Southeast Asia are located in the Indochina Peninsula. In terms of historical heritage, Cambodia is the oldest country in Southeast Asia.
In the 9th century, Cambodia's Angkor dynasty was the first to rise in the Indochina Peninsula, and by the 11th century it was the undisputed hegemon of the Indochina Peninsula, and the surviving Angkor Wat shows the strength of Cambodia in that era.
▲Angkor Wat
However, Cambodia declined rapidly after the 15th century, and Siam (present-day Thailand), which had submitted to Cambodia, continued to attack it.
▲ Angkor Empire
After the 17th century, Cambodia was attacked by two powerful neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam, and was nicknamed the "Southeast Asian version of Poland", and at the end of the 19th century, it completely became a colony of European powers. Cambodia, which slipped from the peak, has been slumped since then, and its development level is still in the backward echelon of Southeast Asia.
In 2022, Cambodia's per capita GDP was about $1,600, ranking second to last among the 10 ASEAN countries (Timor-Leste did not join ASEAN), only higher than Myanmar, which has been subject to Western sanctions and frequent ethnic wars.
▲ The second last in ASEAN
Why did mighty Cambodia decline? Against the background of strong neighbors and colonialist invasion, how did Cambodia escape the crisis of national demise again and again?
▲Indochina Peninsula
1. The Khmer Empire
The Indochina Peninsula is geographically close to China and India, and Sino-Indian culture has had a huge impact on the Indochina Peninsula. Chinese cultural influence was concentrated in the northern part of the Indochina Peninsula, while Indian culture spread to the southern part of the Indochina Peninsula via maritime trade routes.
In the 1st century AD, a number of Indianized states emerged along the southern coast of the Indochina Peninsula, one of which was the predecessor of Cambodia, the Kingdom of Funam.
▲ Indianized countries
At its peak, Funan ruled all of present-day Cambodia, Vietnam, southern Laos, and central Thailand, and was the most powerful state in Indochina. Funan sent envoys to China many times, and there are relevant records in the Book of Later Han and the Book of Jin.
At the end of the 5th century, Funan gradually declined amid civil strife, and Zhenla, who had submitted to Funan, took advantage of the situation to rise. By the end of the 6th century, Funan was conquered by Zhenla, who became the new overlord of the Indochina Peninsula.
▲Funan and Zhenla
The stable political situation and the continuous development of the economy promoted the formation of the nation, and the main ethnic group of Cambodia, the Khmer people, was finally formed during the Chenla Kingdom, which was also the first autocratic feudal state in Cambodian history.
At the beginning of the 8th century, Chenla was divided into two, and the northern inland area was called Luzhenla, and the southern coast was called Shuizhenla. At this time, other ethnic groups on the Indochina Peninsula, such as the Cham and Burmese, only established smaller states, and the Tai people were under the control of Chenla.
▲Kingdom of Chenla
The division of Chenla gave other countries the opportunity to invade, and the island of Java across the sea also had several feudal kingdoms. In 787, the Charentra dynasty, which ruled central Java, invaded Shui Chenla, plundering the princes and nobles and a large number of commoners.
The humiliation of the Chenla people was soon washed away, and in 802 AD, the prince of Chenla, Jayavarman, sneaked back to his homeland and declared himself king (Jayavarman II) at a sacrifice outside Angkor City, declaring that he would overthrow Javanese rule. The tyranny of the Javanese had long angered the Chenla, and the return of Jayavarman gave them hope of restoring the country's independence, and people came to the annexation.
▲ Divided Zhenla
Shiva Gavaliya, a high-ranking religious scholar of Chenla, declared that King Jayavarman was the embodiment of God and the source of all authority, from which theocracy was established.
Wrapped in religion, Jayavarman commanded his army to march around and expel the Javanese before unifying Chenla in 849 AD, ending a century and a half of division in Chenla.
Jayavarman and his descendants will lead the Khmers to write a glorious national epic. The rise of Jayavarman and the future of the empire were closely linked to Angkor City, a country that would henceforth become known as the Angkor Empire.
▲ The early Angkor monarchs believed in Hinduism
Under the rule of Jayavarman II and subsequent monarchs, the Angkor Empire grew in strength, controlling half of the Indochina Peninsula, surpassing the previous Funan Empire in size and population. The neighboring ethnic groups such as the Tai and Cham were successively conquered by the Angkor Empire.
The Tonle Sap Lake area, where Angkor is located, has large plains suitable for agricultural development.
▲Tonle Sap Lake
The Angkor Empire was a feudal autocracy that combined administration and religion, and although there was a central and local bureaucratic system, the real power of the state was in the hands of the royal family headed by the king.
As early as the 6th century, with the increase of Mahayana Buddhist adherents, the status of Buddhism in the Indochina Peninsula became more and more important. In the early years of the Angkor Empire, the ruling class still believed in Hinduism, but Buddhist culture had infiltrated it.
▲ Spread of Buddhism
After the 11th century, due to the continuous expansion of the Buddhist base, in order to maintain his rule, the monarch of Angkor converted to Mahayana Buddhism.
Several Angkor monarchs in the 10th century were mediocre, and Angkor was even briefly destroyed in the 11th century war with Champa.
In 1112 AD, Suryavarman II ascended the throne. He was one of the three great kings in Cambodian history, and he was a king with excellent political and military abilities.
▲ Suriyavarman II
Under his rule, the Angkor Empire extended throughout the Chao Phraya River Valley (the core area of present-day Thailand) and the Malay Peninsula, and Suriyavarman II even led an expedition to Vietnam, which had just gained independence from China in the 10th century.
The Angkor Empire, under the reign of Suryavarman II, was the most powerful country in Southeast Asia at that time. The king recruited a large number of laborers to start building Angkor Wat, which left an immeasurable civilizational wealth for Cambodia.
▲Construction of Angkor Wat
2. Fall into darkness
In 1201, the magnificent Angkor Wat was completed during the reign of Jayavarman VII. Jayavarman VII was another wise monarch in Cambodian history, continuing his predecessor's policy of building Buddhist monasteries and using troops abroad.
After the death of Jayavarman VII, the Angkor Empire gradually declined. There are many reasons for the decline of the Angkor Empire, first of all, the innate institutional defects of the Angkor Empire.
The theocratic regime made the Angkor monarchy both gods and gods, but the empire never established a strong centralization, and local administrators had great power. Angkor also did not have a fixed rule of succession to the throne, and a large number of members of the royal family coveted the throne.
▲ Angkor Empire
The rule of the monarch depends on personal courage, and once the young lord ascends the throne or the monarch himself lacks military strength, unrest is inevitable. The constant foreign wars are more like a bloodletting trough, constantly weakening Angkor's national power.
Religious fanaticism about Buddhism was also an important factor in the decline of Angkor. Since the 11th century since moving from Hinduism to Buddhism, almost every Angkor monarch has built temples on a large scale.
▲Angkor Wat
Not to mention the Angkor Wat, which cost countless dollars, just take the Taplom Temple built by Jayavarman VII for his mother. The temple is decorated with 4,500 precious stones and 42,600 pearls. The temple is home to 12,000 people, including monks, and 66,000 civilians are required to provide free labour and 2,512 tons of food per year.
The extravagance and fanaticism of the rulers and the heavy burden of the people were irreconcilable contradictions, and the wealth of the Angkor Empire was constantly depleted. Civil strife, wars and endless wealth squandering led to the decline of Angkor, and the peoples once ruled by the Angkor Empire rebelled.
▲The Angkor Empire went on conquest
In 1238, the Tai people in the northwest of the empire established the Kingdom of Sukhothai. Sukhothai is seen as the beginning of Thailand's formation of a unified nation, but it was also the beginning of the Angkor Empire and the suffering of the Khmers. Sukhothai continued to invade the Angkor Empire and even plundered the city of Angkor in 1296.
In 1350, the Tai people in the Chao Phraya River Valley established the Kingdom of Siam (the predecessor of Thailand), with the capital Ayutthaya. Between 1353 and 1431, the Siamese army captured Angkor three times in succession. The huge city was brutally destroyed, exquisite temples were plundered, and the magnificent imperial capital was reduced to hell on earth.
▲ The Tai people establish political power
Siam's defeat of Angkor is understandable, in the early years the Thai people submitted to Angkor, and the energy of resistance gathered in their hearts gushed out at independence, but the Angkor army at the same time was sharpened in continuous wars.
In order to intensify the attack on the Angkor Empire, the Siamese army wreaked havoc in Angkor City and the surrounding Tonle Sap plain, and the once large water conservancy system was artificially damaged, turning this land of fish and rice into a ruined land of constant drought and flooding. Siam looted large numbers of people, making it difficult to restore damaged farmland.
▲The agricultural development of the Indochina Peninsula requires artificial facilities
The destruction of agricultural facilities and the decline of the population accelerated the decline of the Angkor Empire, and large swathes of western territory fell to Siam, forcing the Angkor Empire to move its capital east to Lowe.
The fertile Mekong Delta became the most important territory of the Angkor Empire, producing more than half of the rice of the Angkor Empire, and the Mekong River was also an important trade and transportation channel for the Angkor Empire.
After the 14th century, continuous wars made people lose trust in the Angkor monarchy, and the increasing exploitation ignited popular dissatisfaction with the Angkor ruling class, emphasizing status hierarchy and demanding that commoners rely on the royal family Hinduism.
▲ Hinduism makes it difficult to get rid of the shackles of hierarchy
Mahayana Buddhism also emphasized the divinity of the Buddha, portraying King Angkor as a Buddhist deity. With the loss of the authority of the Angkor royal family, Mahayana Buddhism was also excluded, Theravada Buddhism, which advocated the cycle of life and death and self-liberation, became the main faith in Cambodia, the platform for the monarch to rely on religious cohesion was lost, and the Angkor Empire declined even more.
After abandoning Angkor Thom, Siam did not stop invading Cambodia. In order to compete for power, the Angkor royal family in Cambodia has continuously introduced external forces such as Siam, making the already turbid political situation even more chaotic.
▲ Geopolitical upheaval
In 1474, the Cambodian prince Damoro defeated his opponent and ascended to the throne with the help of Siam, but at the cost of Cambodia becoming a vassal of Siam, and even appointing major ministers had to be taken care of by Siam. Subsequent Cambodian kings also tried to fight, but they always led to Siamese invasions.
In 1594, Siam captured the new capital of Cambodia, Lowe. Cambodia desperately needed allies at this time, and Vietnam entered Cambodia's vision at this time.
Since gaining independence from the Central Plains Dynasty in China in the 10th century, Vietnam has continued to advance south with the Red River Delta as its basic plate.
▲Vietnam marches south
By the end of the 16th century, the Later Lê dynasty, which ruled Vietnam, had been overpowered, and Trần Quanchen took control of the center. Another powerful Vietnamese courtier, the Nguyen family, was divided to avoid disaster (present-day central Vietnam), and the Nguyen regime in the south (Nguyen Lord) was weaker than the Trần regime in the north, and Nguyễn had to desperately expand southward in order to increase its strength. In this context, Nguyen's territory reaches the northern side of the Mekong Delta bordering Cambodia.
Cambodia married the Nguyen Lord and obtained the support of the Nguyen Lord to resist the Siamese invasion. Nguyen was handsomely rewarded with mass migration to the rich Mekong Delta under Cambodian rule. Cambodia did not rejoice for long, and soon they would find out that the Vietnamese were no less greedy than Siam.
▲ Ruan Zheng dispute
3. Southeast Asian version of Poland
Cambodia's fate is somewhat similar to that of Poland, a former Eastern European power that was divided between neighboring Russia-Austria and Prussia after its decline.
In Southeast Asia, the role of divider is played by Vietnam and Siam. Since assisting Cambodia in the fight against Siam in the early 17th century, the Vietnamese Nguyen lord has continued to infiltrate Cambodia. Through immigration and garrisons, the abundant Mekong Delta was controlled. Lord Nguyen and Siam also supported agents in Cambodia, constantly igniting the Cambodian civil war.
▲Cambodia caught in the middle
Between 1717 and 1778, two full-scale wars broke out between the Vietnamese lord and Siam over control of Cambodia. Siam was constantly at war with Burma in the west and could not fight Vietnam for Cambodia with all its might. Nguyen only controlled half of Vietnam, and it was impossible to go all out to Cambodia in order to survive.
No one in Viet Siam could achieve a decisive victory, and Cambodia was not completely partitioned.
Siam was briefly annexed by Burma in the mid-18th century, after which Siam was revived by the Chorick dynasty, which still rules Thailand today. At the same time as the establishment of the Cholic Dynasty, the Tây Sơn peasant uprising broke out in Vietnam, and the political map of Vietnam changed, and by 1802, Nguyen Phuc Anh, a descendant of Nguyen Lord, established the Nguyen Dynasty and unified Vietnam.
▲ The countries sandwiched between Vietnam and Siam are not comfortable
In the 19th century, the rivalry between Vietnam and Siem in Cambodia became more intense. Vietnam won the two Vietnam-Siam Wars in 1811 and 1833, and Cambodia became a protectorate of Vietnam as a "trophy".
Vietnam's repressive "Vietnamization" policy of forcibly converting land to the river in order to completely annex Cambodia and forcing the local people to adopt Vietnamese names and adopt the Vietnamese way of life triggered the Cambodian national uprising.
Vietnam in 1840 annexed Cambodia
Siam took the opportunity to send troops to support the anti-Vietnamese uprising in Cambodia. Vietnam's puppet queen An Mei was overthrown, and An Mei's uncle, Anton who had been in exile in Siam for a long time, was put on the throne, and King Andong was the ancestor of the current Cambodian royal family.
In addition to Cambodia, Siam and Vietnam have fought for Laos, and Siam has fought intermittently with Burma to the west, and this political ecology has been maintained in the Indochina Peninsula for hundreds of years. But the arrival of European colonists broke the original political environment in Southeast Asia.
▲ The arrival of the colonists
In the 20s of the 19th century, Britain used India as a springboard to invade Burma and was the first to invade the Indochina Peninsula. France invaded Vietnam in 1859 and ceded the Mekong Delta.
In the same year, King Anton of Cambodia died, and France immediately sent warships to intimidate his son Norodom and force him to sign the Franco-Cambodian Treaty, and Cambodia gradually became a French protectorate.
By the end of the 19th century, France had taken control of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, merging them into French Indochina. Siam became a buffer zone for British and French power.
▲Southeast Asia at the beginning of the 20th century
Although the King of Cambodia retains it, he has no real power. Under French operation, King Andong's two sons, Norodom and Sisowa, became kings, and their descendants evolved into the two royal families of present-day Cambodia.
France stipulated that adult men of the two royal families had the right to be elected king by the Supreme Royal Council, and Cambodia's two royal families and the royal election system continue to this day.
▲Norodom and Sisowa
4. The road to nirvana
In 1941, King Monivan of the Sisowa family died, and France elected his grandson, Sihanouk from the Norodom family, as the new king.
The French mistook the 19-year-old boy, and Sihanouk was not willing to be a puppet, and he took advantage of the Japanese army's entry into French Indochina during World War II and the weakening of French colonial power to negotiate with the French.
▲Sihanoukville
More than 100,000 Cambodians joined the French army in World War II, and many gave their lives. Sihanouk thought that such a sacrifice would lead to France's recognition of Cambodia's independence, but he did not expect France to make a comeback after World War II.
In January 1946, France and the Sihanouk government signed an interim agreement recognizing Cambodia as an autonomous state within the French Federation, but all documents signed by the King still required the consent of the French High Commissioner to Cambodia. Cambodians were dissatisfied with this nominal autonomy and waged struggles throughout the country.
▲ France is back
In November 1949, France was forced to legally recognize Cambodia's independence, but the judicial, police, military, diplomatic, and financial powers remained under French control. The Cambodian struggle did not cease, and Sihanouk personally traveled to France in 1953 to negotiate with the French president.
Vietnam is the most important component of French Indochina, and in 1953, the French troops who returned to Vietnam were beaten by the North Vietnamese army, which promoted the cause of Cambodia's independence, and Cambodia's independence was recognized by the international community in 1954.
▲Vietnam against France
From the decline of the Angkor Empire in the 14th century, the Cambodians endured 600 years of ups and downs to finally win independence after World War II, but the fate of suffering does not seem to have completely left.
During the Cold War, Cambodia refused to join the American camp and was strangled economically by the United States. In 1970, on the occasion of Sihanouk's visit, the pro-American Lon Nol staged a coup d'état to overthrow the constitutional monarchy and establish the Khmer Republic.
▲Lon Nol
Lon Nol's rule lasted only five years, and in 1975 he was overthrown by the Khmer Rouge movement, which came to power and established Democratic Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge continued to infiltrate the Mekong Delta in an attempt to reclaim what was once Cambodian territory.
Vietnam, which had just defeated the United States and completed reunification, was on the rise of domestic nationalism and compared itself to the world's third military power. Previously, the Khmer Rouge regime refused to establish a "special relationship" with Vietnam and did not recognize Vietnam's regional hegemony. The Khmer Rouge's infiltration into the Mekong Delta provided Vietnam with a pretext, and the border conflict eventually turned into war.
▲Vietnam-Cambodia War
In 1979, 200,000 Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia and supported the pro-Vietnamese People's Republic of Kampah. The Vietnamese invasion made the situation in Cambodia even more chaotic, and Cambodian forces were fighting together.
Until 1989, under the great pressure of the international community and huge military expenditure, Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia, and the Cambodian forces finally reached a compromise after several rounds of negotiations, Cambodia restored the constitutional monarchy, and Sihanouk became the king again.
▲The political situation in Cambodia is turbulent
The Paris Agreement failed to resolve Cambodia's deep-seated contradictions, and the new government was a caravan of reluctant cooperation among all factions, and infighting persisted, which seriously hindered Cambodia's further development.
Lagging behind the education systems of its regional neighbors leaves Cambodia short of talent. The weak economic foundation and poor infrastructure make it impossible for Cambodia to win over foreign investors. The huge number of landmines left behind the war also restricts the development of tourism in Cambodia.
▲Cambodian countryside
After years of war, Cambodia missed development opportunities and failed to undertake the transfer of Western industries in the Cold War and the end of the 20th century like Thailand and Vietnam.
Even though Cambodia's economy has improved considerably since 2010, as of 2022, Cambodia's per capita GDP of US$1,600 is only 43% of Vietnam's and 22% of Thailand's, ranking third from the bottom among the 11 Southeast Asian countries.
As the basis of economic development, Cambodia has a population of 17 million, Thailand has a population of more than 70 million, and Vietnam's population is about to exceed 100 million.
▲The Mekong Delta is now the most densely populated area in Vietnam
Cambodia and Thailand still have territorial disputes, and border clashes are frequent. As for Vietnam, the attitude of Cambodians is also very contradictory, economic development requires Vietnam's cooperation, but the loss of land such as the Mekong River makes it difficult for Cambodians to let go.
Today, Thailand and Vietnam, relying on their national strength, are still trying to strengthen their influence on Cambodia in order to expand their regional discourse.
Cambodia, the first country to rise in the Indochina Peninsula and once a regional hegemon, is now the last in Southeast Asia in terms of economic aggregate and population size. Only the remains of Angkor in the rainforest can still make people remember Cambodia's former "imperial glory".
▲From Angkor to Phnom Penh, Cambodia cannot go back to the past