Historical figure
Ang Mei
អង្គម៉ី
Ang Mei (អង្គម៉ី, also written Ang Mey) was a queen of Cambodia who held the throne under Vietnamese control in the 1830s and 1840s.[1][2] She was the second daughter of King Ang Chan II and was born in 1815.[1] The historian Lawrence Palmer Briggs wrote that she was the first woman to hold the Cambodian throne in her own right since the legendary queen "Willow Leaf."[3]
Coming to the throne
Ang Chan II died in 1834[3] or early in January 1835,[2] leaving four daughters and no son.[2] The Vietnamese emperor Ming Mang first planned to make the eldest daughter, Ben, queen if she married one of his sons, but the Cambodian high officials, the ocnha, opposed the plan.[2] The choice then fell on Mei. Briggs places her election after her father's death in 1834.[3] Her accession is also dated to January 1835,[1] and her investiture, at Slaket, to 1835, about four months after her father's death.[2] To the Vietnamese court she ranked only as a princess: an edict of Ming Mang gave her the title Quan Chua (princess), and her Vietnamese title was Princess Ngoc Van.[2][1] Her sisters received lesser titles at the same ceremony, in which the princesses and the Cambodian officials knelt and bowed before the emperor's edict.[2]
Under Vietnamese rule
Real power lay with the Vietnamese general Truong Ming Giang, who ran the kingdom for the emperor from Phnom Penh with several thousand troops.[2] The Vietnamese renamed Cambodia Tran Tay Thanh, the "Western Citadel," and divided it into prefectures under Vietnamese officials.[2] Briggs wrote that they renamed the capital Nam Viang and required Cambodian officials, the queen among them, to take Vietnamese names, customs and dress.[3] Many military and civilian officials, and teachers as well, were sent from Vietnam.[2] The Vietnamese program set out to change Cambodian dress and ways of thinking, to reform schooling and to destroy Cambodian beliefs.[2]
Before the uprising of August 1840,[2] or in August 1840,[1] Ming Mang removed Mei and her sisters from their standing as rulers of a dependent kingdom. He gave Mei the lesser title of princess of My-lam, with a yearly allowance in money and rice.[2] One hundred soldiers were assigned to her, in name as guards and in practice to watch her.[2] After his officials said they had found that Ben was in secret contact with Siam, Truong Ming Giang sent Mei, her two other sisters and other royals to Saigon.[2] Another dating places her exile at Hue in 1841.[1] The removal of the queen and the officials to Vietnam helped set off a Cambodian uprising against Vietnamese rule in August 1840.[2]
Return and the two courts
To win back Cambodian support, the Vietnamese brought Mei, her two sisters and the mother of Ang Duong back to Phnom Penh at the end of April 1841.[2] Truong Ming Giang returned to her the royal seal and the sacred sword, let her name officials and had her write to the ocnha and the people asking for their support, but the call went unanswered.[2] Two days after she reached Phnom Penh, the Siamese general Bodin Decha brought her uncle Ang Duong to Oudong, so that for a time Cambodia had two courts about 30 kilometers (19 miles) apart.[2] When the Vietnamese pulled out of Phnom Penh in November 1841 (September 1841 in a Vietnamese chronicle), Mei and her sisters went with them to Chau Doc.[2]
In 1844 the Vietnamese announced that they would bring Mei and her sisters back to reign.[2] The Angkor Database editors write that she was briefly restored that year;[1] Theam Bun Srun's account, which places her under house arrest in Phnom Penh in the mid-1840s, records no restoration in 1844.[2] Emperor Thieu Tri allowed the princesses to return to Phnom Penh in 1845.[2] In the peace talks that followed, Ang Duong asked for her release, and the Vietnamese kept her in Phnom Penh, where she lived at their headquarters under a guard of about 300 men.[2] In the envoys' report of their visit, she asked after his health and told them that "if friendship could be restored, it would be good; we would be able to live together with our uncle..."[2]
Later life
Thieu Tri restored Mei's title of princess of Cambodia when he recognized Ang Duong as king, and Ang Duong's officials escorted her and her sisters to Oudong, ending about seven years in Vietnamese hands.[2] Ang Duong's coronation took place in October 1846[1] or 1847.[3][2] Theam Bun Srun wrote that she probably held the royal rank of Upayuvareach during Ang Duong's reign, and that she and her sisters had ruled only in name, more prisoners of the Vietnamese than rulers.[2]
The French official Jean Moura saw her at Oudong, living in a house inside the old citadel, attended by former ladies-in-waiting and servants. He called her une folle, a madwoman, and wrote that local people bowed before her as they would before a reigning queen, and that the mother of King Norodom I, her cousin, saw to her needs.[1] The Angkor Database editors date his visit to late 1872 or 1873, and give her death as December 1874, at Oudong.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Angkor Database, De Phnom Penh a Pursat (From Phnom Penh to Pursat), Jean Moura (1883), with editors' notes (undated)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 2.24 2.25 2.26 2.27 Australian National University (PDF via Angkor Database), Bun Srun Theam, Cambodia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Quest for Survival, 1840-1863 (master's thesis, 1981)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Lawrence Palmer Briggs, A Sketch of Cambodian History, The Far Eastern Quarterly 6(4) (August 1947)