History

History of Cambodia

The history of Cambodia runs from prehistoric cave sites in the northwest, through the Khmer Empire of Angkor, to the present-day kingdom.[1] For about 2,000 years its civilization took in influences from India and China and passed them on to its neighbors in Southeast Asia.[2]

Five sandstone towers of Angkor Wat rising behind palm trees, mirrored in a still pool under a blue sky.
The central towers of Angkor Wat seen across the western reflecting pool, 2017.

Prehistory

People used the cave of Laang Spean, on a limestone hill in Battambang province, over a very long span. Its layers hold a Palaeolithic level with flakes of chert, a Hoabinhian level of pebble tools and a Neolithic level with burials.[3] Samrong Sen, a shell midden (a mound of discarded shells) on the Chinit River, is among the earliest prehistoric sites known in Southeast Asia.[4] On the red soil plateau of the east lie the circular earthworks of Memot, called banteay kou in Khmer; more than 55 were known by 2011.[5]

Funan and Chenla

Funan (នគរភ្នំ, Nokor Phnom) was an early state on the lower Mekong and its delta.[6] Its name comes from Chinese records, which describe it from the 3rd to the 6th century.[7] At Angkor Borei, in Takeo province, radiocarbon dates show people living by the 5th or 4th century BCE, and its walls once enclosed at least 300 hectares.[7] Oc Eo, in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam, was probably a coastal trading port of Funan.[7]

Chinese records then name the Khmer lands Chenla. Seshat dates the period from about 550 to 825 and treats Chenla as more likely a set of rival centers than a single state.[8] A main center was Isanapura, the temple site now called Sambor Prei Kuk.[9]

The Khmer Empire

The Khmer Empire was the Khmer state centered on Angkor from the 9th to the 15th century.[10] Its inscriptions call the people Kambuja and the country Kambujadesa.[11] Jayavarman II set his capital, Mahendraparvata, on Phnom Kulen, and later moved his court to Hariharalaya, near Angkor.[11][12] Yasovarman I founded Yasodharapura around the hill of Phnom Bakheng, and the name stayed with every later capital at Angkor.[11][13]

Suryavarman II, crowned in 1113, built Angkor Wat, dedicated to Vishnu.[13][14] Jayavarman VII, who came to the throne in the early 1180s, built the walled city of Angkor Thom with the Bayon at its center.[15] At its height the empire held lands that are now part of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.[1] Its kings built hydraulic works of basins, dikes, reservoirs and canals.[10] Theravada Buddhism spread among the Khmer in the 13th and 14th centuries.[14]

After Angkor

The court left Angkor in the 15th century.[16] In Takako Kitagawa's reading of the royal chronicles, King Ponhea Yat moved the capital in 1431 to Basan, in Srei Santhor, and later to Phnom Penh.[16] The date 1431 appears only in the annals of Ayutthaya.[17] In the 16th century the capital was Longvek. King Chan I (reigned 1516 to 1566) briefly reoccupied the Angkor area and added bas-reliefs to Angkor Wat. In the 1590s the Tai of Ayutthaya invaded and sacked Longvek.[2]

From the early 17th century the royal capital was Oudong.[16] Between 1603 and 1848, 22 monarchs held the throne. Many sought the protection of Siam or Vietnam against rivals in the royal family, and the kingdom lost land and sovereignty.[2] In 1794 Siam took the provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap, which it held until 1907.[2] After King Chan II died in 1835, Vietnam placed his daughter Mei on the throne and controlled most of the country.[2] Cambodians rose against Vietnamese rule in the 1840 Cambodian uprising.[18] Ang Duong, who returned with Siamese troops in 1841 and reigned from 1848 to 1860, tried to rebuild the kingdom's institutions with very limited means.[2]

French protectorate

In 1863 French naval officers from Vietnam persuaded King Norodom to sign a treaty that gave France control of Cambodia's foreign affairs.[2] In 1884 the French forced him to sign a convention that made Cambodia close to a colony. Provincial officials raised armies against the French, and the revolt lasted until mid-1886. In 1897 the French representative in Phnom Penh took executive power.[2]

King Sisowath (reigned 1904 to 1927) worked more closely with the French. In 1907 Siam returned Battambang and Siem Reap, with the ruins of Angkor. The French built hundreds of miles of paved roads and planted thousands of acres of rubber.[2] Under King Sisowath Monivong (reigned 1927 to 1941) a railway opened from Phnom Penh to the Siamese border. The first Khmer-language newspaper, Nagara Vatta ("Angkor Wat"), linked to the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh, carried a mildly nationalist message.[2]

In 1941 the French governor-general Jean Decoux placed Monivong's grandson, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, then 18, on the throne. Japanese forces occupied French Indochina but left the French in charge until March 1945. Then, pressed by Japan, Sihanouk declared independence, and Son Ngoc Thanh, a former editor of Nagara Vatta, led the government for several months.[2] The French returned in October 1945. Cambodia became an autonomous state within the French Union, with its own constitution and political parties, and the Democratic Party held the National Assembly. In June 1952 Sihanouk took control of the government, and his "Royal Crusade" abroad won independence from France by the end of 1953.[2] Cambodia marks Independence Day on November 9, the date of independence in 1953.[19]

Independence and the Sangkum

The 1954 Geneva Conference recognized Sihanouk's government as the only legitimate authority in Cambodia.[20] In March 1955 Sihanouk gave up the throne to his father, Norodom Suramarit, and formed the Sangkum Reastr Niyum ("People's Socialist Community"). The Sangkum won every seat in the National Assembly in the 1955 elections, amid widely reported abuses by the police. Sihanouk led Cambodian politics as prime minister and, after his father died in 1960, as head of state.[20]

Sihanouk declared a policy of neutrality in foreign affairs. He broke off relations with the United States in 1965 and made secret agreements that let Vietnamese communist troops stay in border districts. In 1963 Saloth Sar, the secretary of the small Communist Party, left Phnom Penh for the forests near the Vietnamese border, where he built the movement later known as the Khmer Rouge.[20] After a rebellion in Battambang province in 1967, Sihanouk's government used severe measures, including imprisonment without trial and the burning of villages.[20]

Khmer Republic and civil war

In March 1970, while Sihanouk was abroad, the National Assembly voted to remove him as head of state, and General Lon Nol took control of the government. In Beijing, Sihanouk agreed to lead a united front in exile, allied with China and North Vietnam and with the Cambodian communist forces of Saloth Sar.[20] The war drew Cambodia fully into the conflict in Vietnam. In May 1970 United States and South Vietnamese troops entered eastern Cambodia, and in 1973 the United States carried out a massive bombing campaign that devastated the countryside around the capital. By the end of 1973 Lon Nol's government held only Phnom Penh, the northwest and a few provincial towns.[20]

Democratic Kampuchea

Lon Nol's government collapsed in April 1975. Khmer Rouge forces entered Phnom Penh and ordered its people to leave for the countryside, and every city and town was emptied in less than a week. Thousands of city dwellers died on the forced marches.[20] Money, markets and private property were abolished, and schools, hospitals and monasteries were closed. A new constitution in 1976 named the country Democratic Kampuchea, with Pol Pot, the name Saloth Sar then used, as prime minister.[20]

The regime forced the whole population into unpaid collective labor. Britannica gives a conservative estimate of at least 1.5 million deaths between April 1975 and early 1979, about 20 percent of the population, from overwork, starvation, disease and execution.[20] The interrogation center S-21 in Phnom Penh was the site of more than 15,000 executions.[20] Its buildings are kept as the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.[21] The killing site at Choeung Ek became part of the UNESCO World Heritage property Cambodian Memorial Sites in 2025.[22]

People's Republic of Kampuchea

Fighting between the Khmer Rouge and Vietnam grew into open war by the end of 1977. In December 1978 a large Vietnamese army entered Cambodia, and within two weeks it had installed the People's Republic of Kampuchea, led largely by Cambodian communists who had left Pol Pot in 1977 and 1978.[23] Phnom Penh fell on January 7, 1979. Some remember the date as a victory and a liberation from the Khmer Rouge, marked as Victory over Genocide Day; others see it as the start of a Vietnamese invasion.[24]

Under the new government private property was restored, schools reopened, some Buddhist practice returned and the cities filled again. At least 500,000 Cambodians fled to Thailand, and perhaps 200,000 of them settled in other countries.[23] The camp at Khao I Dang, in Thailand, was the main route for those trying to leave for other countries.[25] Three resistance groups on the Thai border, the followers of Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front, formed a government in exile in 1982 that held Cambodia's seat at the United Nations.[23] Vietnam completed the withdrawal of its forces in 1989, and the Phnom Penh government then openly encouraged Buddhism; hundreds of monasteries were restored, often with money from Cambodians abroad.[23]

The kingdom restored

The Paris Agreements, signed on October 23, 1991, set up the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). A Supreme National Council chaired by Prince Sihanouk held Cambodia's sovereignty during the transition.[26] More than 300,000 refugees returned from Thailand in 1992 and 1993.[23] In elections from May 23 to 28, 1993, 89.56 percent of registered voters cast ballots. FUNCINPEC won 58 seats in the Constituent Assembly and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) 51; the Party of Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge, took no part.[26] On September 24, 1993, Sihanouk promulgated the new constitution, which made Cambodia a constitutional monarchy, and the Royal Council of the Throne elected him king. Prince Norodom Ranariddh became first prime minister and Hun Sen second prime minister.[26]

The Khmer Rouge movement broke apart in the mid-1990s as its fighters defected to the government. In 1997 Hun Sen removed Ranariddh from power in fighting that Britannica calls a coup. By 1998 Pol Pot was dead, and the CPP won the most seats in the elections that July.[23] Cambodia joined ASEAN in 1999 and the World Trade Organization in 2004.[23] In October 2004 Sihanouk gave up the throne, and his son Norodom Sihamoni became king.[27] Sihanouk died in October 2012.[23]

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a court backed by the United Nations, tried senior Khmer Rouge leaders.[28] Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, who ran S-21, was convicted in 2010. Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan were convicted of crimes against humanity in 2014 and of genocide in 2018.[23] The court finished its work in 2022, when it upheld Khieu Samphan's conviction.[28] In 2013 the International Court of Justice ruled that Cambodia should control the site of the Temple of Preah Vihear, after border clashes with Thailand from 2008 to 2011.[23]

In November 2017 the Supreme Court dissolved the main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party, and the CPP won every elected seat in the legislature in 2018. The CPP won the 2023 elections after the Candlelight Party was disqualified. Hun Sen stepped down, and his son Hun Manet was sworn in as prime minister on August 22, 2023.[23]

See also

References 28
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cambodia (updated October 26, 2026)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cambodia: Tai and Vietnamese hegemony, French rule, World War II and its aftermath (updated October 26, 2026)
  3. ↑ Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Hubert Forestier and others, The Hoabinhian from Laang Spean Cave in its stratigraphic, chronological, typo-technological and environmental context (Cambodia, Battambang province) (2015)
  4. ↑ Modern Quaternary Research in Southeast Asia, Roland Mourer, Laang Spean and the Prehistory of Cambodia (1977)
  5. ↑ Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, D. Kyle Latinis and Michael Dega, A Brief Study of Cambodian Circular Earthwork Ceramics as Explained through EDXRF Analysis (2011)
  6. ↑ Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, History of the Khmer in the time of the kingdom of Phnom, part 3 (February 5, 2014; in Khmer)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Miriam T. Stark, New Perspectives on Early Cambodia from the Lower Mekong Archaeological Project (about 2001)
  8. ↑ Seshat Global History Databank, Chenla (undated)
  9. ↑ Piphal Heng and Paul A. Lavy, Pre-Angkorian cities: Ishanapura and Mahendraparvata (undated book chapter)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Angkor (undated)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 The Far Eastern Quarterly, Lawrence Palmer Briggs, A Sketch of Cambodian History (August 1947)
  12. ↑ UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Phnom Kulen: Archeological Site/Ancient Site of Mahendraparvata, tentative list entry (March 27, 2020)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Proceedings of the British Academy, Charles F. W. Higham, The Origins of the Civilisation of Angkor (2003)
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 University of Chicago, Digital South Asia Library (Huntington Archive), Angkor Wat, 1113-1150: The Role of Astronomy at Angkor Wat (undated)
  15. ↑ The Cambodia Daily, Michelle Vachon, After a Century of Study, Bayon Temple Continues To Deliver Mysteries (January 16, 2010)
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Chapter 2. Overview of the Site, in Report on the Investigations of Royal Capital Sites in the Post-Angkor Period (undated)
  17. ↑ Angkor Database, Factors that Led to the Change of the Khmer Capitals from 15th to 17th Century, by Nhim Sotheavin (undated)
  18. ↑ Australian National University, Bun Srun Theam, Cambodia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Quest for Survival, 1840-1863 (MA thesis, 1981)
  19. ↑ Press and Quick Reaction Unit, Office of the Council of Ministers, His Majesty the King Presides Over the Closing Celebration of 66th Anniversary of Independence Day (November 11, 2019)
  20. ↑ 20.00 20.01 20.02 20.03 20.04 20.05 20.06 20.07 20.08 20.09 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cambodia: Independence, Civil war, Democratic Kampuchea (updated October 26, 2026)
  21. ↑ Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, History of the Museum (undated)
  22. ↑ UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Cambodian Memorial Sites (inscribed 2025)
  23. ↑ 23.00 23.01 23.02 23.03 23.04 23.05 23.06 23.07 23.08 23.09 23.10 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Cambodia: Vietnamese intervention, The 1990s, Cambodia since 2000 (updated October 26, 2026)
  24. ↑ Cambodgemag, Jean-Claude Kroussar, Cambodia history: the second fall of Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979 (January 7, 2026)
  25. ↑ Royal College of Art, Magali An Berthon, Silk and Post-Conflict Cambodia: Embodied Practices and Global and Local Dynamics of Heritage and Knowledge Transference (1991-2018) (PhD thesis, October 2021)
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 United Nations Peacekeeping, United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC): Background (undated)
  27. ↑ NBC News, The Associated Press, Cambodia crowns new king (October 29, 2004)
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 UN News, Cambodia: UN-backed tribunal ends with conviction upheld for last living Khmer Rouge leader (September 22, 2022)
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This page was last edited on 27 October 2026, at 07:33.