More specifically, I will introduce myself and talk about my reasons why I decided to build this web site. I especially want to analyze the history and its impact on Cambodian behavior, particularly the crushing role of the monarchy on the loss of identity of the Cambodian people. In order to better grasp what I just said we have to set this analysis in the Cambodian historical context.

(See the information on my professional and personal background, please go to the links entitled "Something about Me and My Family "  and "My Professional Background" posted on this page just below the introduction)

 But above all,

• "this site was built as a personal tribute and a symbolic monument dedicated to all those innocent Cambodian, Cham, and minority men, women, and Children"

who fell victims to the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge's insanity and cruelty, by Hun Sen's blind ambition and high treason with the help and support of the Vietnamese in their relentless historic Southward March or "Nam Tien" to fulfill their long term territorial ambition to build an empire, at the expense of the lives of the Chams, the Cambodians, and the minorities, and by Sihanouk's deceit, megalomenia, and egomania.

There is no question in my mind that the long monopoly of absolute power held by the monarchy throughout the Cambodian history, dating back to the first century A.D., has done irreparable harm to the Cambodian people by suppressing their identity and by making them totally subservient to the whims and egomania of the kings and members of their family. The members of Cambodian royal family are known not for their high moral standard, but for their loose code of behavior (polygamy, murdering each other), and for their constant quarreling and infighting against each other in their struggle for power. This family feud often led to the request for support from foreign countries, especially from Siam (Thailand) and Dai Viet (Vietnam). These two new and more dynamic regional powers were more than happy to comply. In return, these countries demanded either land concession or laborers as slaves to compensate for their "help". 

(Go to the link posted at the end of Home page entitled "Cambodia: History and other Information") 

However, the international security system has totally changed in favor of the national sovreignty of nation-states, since the beginning of the the twentith century with the creation of the League of the Nations, after World War I, and especially with creation of the United Nations after World War II.

But, Vietnam has been able to manipulate the international security system to its advantage and by using the weaknesses in the national characters of all Cambodian leaders including Seng Ngoc Than, Sihanouk, Pol Pot, and Hun Sen.

While Thailand has become more democratic therefore less of a threat to Cambodia, Vietnam continues to be the main and deadly threat to the survival of Cambodia as a society and country. Vietnam has been using what a Cambodian scholar called the "Leopard Skin Strategy", which consisted of moving settlers into Cambodia with the conivance of Cambodian leaders, in particular Hun Sen, to create core settlements within the Cambodian national territory. Vietnam has been using this strategy against Champa first, and then against Kampuchea Krom, and now agianst Cambodia proper (for more details on the Vietnamization of Champa, please go to the page at the left-hand side column entilted "Vietnam "Nam Tien" or Impreiralism)

At another level, the treatment of Cambodians by Thailand and Vietnam varies enormously due to the vast difference between the foundation of the Thai and Vietnamese civilization. There is definitely a clash of civilization in the relations between Cambodia and Vietnam. There is no such conflict between Cambodia and Thailand.

The Thai people have much in common with the Cambodians in terms of social and religious organization based on common indianized culture and civilization. Whereas Vietnam is an integral part of the Chinese civilization which tends to look down at other non-sinic societies and people as inferiors or barbarians.

This distinction in the relationship between Cambodia and Thailand on the one hand, and between Cambodia and Vietnam on the ohter hand, is well captured by the following excerpt from a US Library of the Congress country studies (1987):

"But the Thai and the Vietnamese had fundamentally different attitudes concerning their relationships with Cambodia. The Thai shared with the Khmer a common religion, mythology, literature, and culture. The Chakri kings at Bangkok wanted Cambodia's loyalty and tribute, but they had no intention of challenging or changing its people's values or way of life. The Vietnamese viewed the Khmer people as barbarians to be civilized through exposure to Vietnamese culture, and they regarded the fertile Khmer lands as legitimate sites for colonization by settlers from Vietnam."

(US Library of the Congress, Country Studies Program, Washington, DC. 1987)

These core settlements later on are enlarged by bringing new immigrants from vietnam. Once, Vietnam is in control of the new region in cambodia Cambodian towns and cities name are changed to Vietnamese one, while the population are forced to adopted Vietnamese names and even dresses code.

(For more details, please,  see the link on Vietnamese mistreatment of Khmer Krom section below).

This strategy has been sucessfully implemented since the thirteenth century against Champa and since the seventeenth century in Lower Cambodia or Kampuchea Krom, now known as South Vietnam.

But, one must add that Vietnam could not have succeeded in its imperial design without the help or the betrayal and cooperation of Cambodian leaders.

(See the link on the attempt by Vietnam to dominate and conquer Cambodia, and please, also, see the excerpt on Vietnam's Imperial March or Nam Tien posted below)

The practice of the god-king (Deva-Raja) cult of personality and its accompanying increasing need to build bigger and bigger temples to honor their ancestors, to mystify the common people in order to subjugate them, and to constantly fight and betray each other among the members of the Khmer royal family, are well captured in an excerpt from a book entitled "The Civilization of Angkor" written by Charles Higham - a British archeologist specialized in Southeast Asia - in which he vividly described the flaws in the god-king cult of personality when combined with the reality of human frailties, and the selfish behavior of the Khmer kings during the Angkor period (802-1432) had inevitably resulted in a negative and disastrous impact on the Khmer society and people, as follows:

"Kings who ruled for a significant period of time would have a state temple constructed, initially in the form of a raised pyramid to house a linga named after themselves and Shiva, which embodied the power of the state. The temple represented Mount Meru, the home of the Hindu gods, just as the walls and moats symbolized the surrounding mountains and oceans. Kings put in place divined images of their ancestors, whose names were again subtly combined with those of the gods, and worshipped them.

With the king's death, this temple became his mausoleum. Ideologically, the linking of the central and regional temples into a devotional web in which endowments, worship and loyalty brought merit to accumulate for the next rebirth was a strong bonding mechanism.

The re-creation of heaven on earth and the pursuit of ideological perfection ran counter to human frailties. One of the recurrent problems faced by the rulers of Angkor was a centrifugal tendency, in which outlying areas paid only lip service to central edicts.

A second weakness was factionalism in the centre. Suryavarman I appear to have attempted to exert a centralizing authority over the semi-independent princes living north of the Dang Raek range. Three decades after his death, the princely dynasty of Mahidharapura rose in revolt and, in the person of Jayavarman VI, took Angkor. The lack of firm rules of succession, linked with the practice of polygamy and the ancient tradition of descent through the female line, meant that any number of princes could claim a legitimate title.

Suryavarman himself, for example, claimed descent from the line of Indravarman I when he deposed Jayaviravarman. Even Indravarman avoided direct reference to his two predecessors in the ninth century. In the case of Indravarman III, possession of the Preah Khan, the sacred sword and symbol of kingship, secured him the throne at the expense of his father-in-law. Instability thus lay at the core and at the outer reaches of the civilization of Angkor.

Given the scale of Angkor as it expanded and changed over the centuries, it is tempting to concentrate attention on the centre at the expense of the countryside. Virtually no archaeological research has been undertaken beyond Angkor. Even great temples like Beng Mealea and Preah Khan of Kompong Svay lie virtually untouched."

A Cambodian commoner was never given credit for any achievement during his or her life time. For, any achievement can only be credited to the king, and the king alone. In this context, the king has the absolute power to make or break any commoner. In other words, the king can bestow a prestigious position to a commoner, but he can also remove it not on the merit of case but on purely his whimsical mood or that of his entourage. Consequently, a Cambodian commoner has no identity in the very unequal society of the pre and Angkor eras, as Charles Higman once more vividly commented that:

"The 250 years from AD 550 onwards in the riverine flood plains of the interior saw two diamatrically opposing forces at work. The first involved high chiefs, overlords or kings attempting to control land and labour through force and the protection of a sacred persona. This was offset by other local leaders pursuing independence and their own push for regional hegemony. In contrast, the cyclic rising and falling of competing overlords echoes similar sequences noted in the Near East and the Americas. Within this period, one does not need to look far to find evidence for growing social inequality. The very names are sufficient evidence, on the one hand, the Sanskrit title of a king meaning protegé of the great Indra, and on the other hand, workers with Khmer names meaning dog, stinker, black monkey and arse."

(For more information on Charles Higham's book, please go to "Selected Bibliography of Cambodia")

The above excerpts describing the main flaws in the Khmer monarchy during the Angkor period, almost six hundred years ago, is very much in practice under present day Cambodian monarchy. The recent royal family feuds between Sihanouk and Ranariddh, on the one hand, and between Ranariddh and Sihamoni, on the other hand, (not to mentioned between Ranariddh and Chakrapong) clearly shows that members of the cambodian royal family continue to behave very immorally, disdainfully towards the Cambodian people, and very selfishly with disastrous consequences for the Cambodian society and people, as a whole. This disastrous impact of the Cambodia royal family on the Cambodian society was well captured by Berbard Philippe Groslier, a reknown French Archeologist specialized in Southeast Asia, as follows:

"On the other hand, we must not be led by its undeniable brilliance to bestow unqualified praise on Khmer civilization. It contained within itself the seeds of its own destruction. An excessive and too exclusive inflation of the royal power produced a kind of hypertrophy which exhausted the nation beyond hope of recovery. The country was milked dry for the sole benefit of the king. Religion and art alike were dedicated to his service. Our judgment may perhaps be warped owing to the disappearance of all secular writings and of an incalculable number of works of art. But there is no evidence of any healthy philosophy developing outside the cult of the king-god, after whose disappearance there was in any case nothing capable of regenerating the nation. In such a closed society nothing was left to pin one's faith on - except Buddhism, a religion of total renunciation."

Considering that, with the exception of Lon Nol Republic regime (1970-75) and that of the Khmer Rouge (1975-78), the monarchy has been the only power that prevailed and presided over the destiny of Cambodia for almost two thousand years. Even during the French Protectorate when the Cambodian monarchy was revived to facilitate the French rule of the country.

(See a file entitled "A sequence of Historical maps....." immediately below this introduction)

After reaching it apex in the 13th century, Cambodia has been declining continuously from the most powerful nation in mainland Southeast Asia to one of the poorest nations on the planet, today.

Therefore, one cannot say that the monarchy has been good for Cambodia. Looking deeper into the flaws in the Cambodian society. I will also try to highlight the main character and behavior of the Cambodian people that prevented them from being as successful as, say, the Vietnamese people, even when they are living abroad. I might put a picture of myself on this page...or just a picture that I think would enhance the knowledge about the Cambodian past and present tragedy.

(see" Khmer Mentality" and "Khmer Today; the Concept of Time," also "Tradition and Customs: Rigid Respect for Social Hierarchy leads to Absence of Right to Criticize" and in "Fatalism, Prophesies, and Superstition" in "Special Articles and Essays" section, and also the link posted below on Camparing Academic achievements of Vietnamese-Americans relative to Cambodian-Americans). More on Sihanouk's disastrous impact on Cambodian society and people, please go to the article entitled

"My Testimony at the US Senate Foreign Relations Sub Committee on Asia and the Pacific", in "Recent articles and essays" heading, and also at the heading entitled "Sihanouk and His Comrades; the Khmer Rouge. and the Viet Cong."

Here, you'll also learn all about me: my interests and hobbies, the people in my family, my pets, and more. I've even included a list of my "favorite links" to other sites.

For those of you who are interested in how Cambodians could save themselves from total disintegration from internal and external enemies, especially from Vietnamese imperialism with the support of Hun Sen and Sihanouk, please click this link in one of my web sites pasted below, entitled;

 'A Suggested Roadmap to Freedom for the Cambodian People.' 

http://cambodiana.org/ARuggestedRoadmaptofreedomforCambodia.aspx

For the respect of those innocent Cambodian and other victims children, women and men who have perished under the insane and murderous Khmer Rouge, under the voracious and genocidal Vietnamese, under Hun Sen, the traitor, and under the egomaniac and egotistic Sihanouk,  I have decided not to allow any commercialism such as advertisement whatsoever to appear on this site.

Last but not least, I hope that our visitors find this site user-friendly.

Washington DC. June 2004

Naranhkiri Tith, Ph.D.

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