Norodom I

Modern kingdom › Phnom Penh

1. Funanto about 550
2. Chenla6th to 8th century
3. Angkor802 to 1431
4. After Angkor1431 to 1794
5. Modern kingdomfrom 1794

BeforeAng Duong1841 to 1860 (Gunn 2012)

This reignNorodom I1860 to 1904 (Gunn 2012)1859 to 1904 (Gunn 2012, second passage)and 2 more readings

AfterSisowath1904 to 1927 (AEFEK 2021)1904 to 1927 (Gunn 2012)

All Khmer monarchs

Norodom I (ព្រះបាទនរោត្តម), also called King Norodom, was king of Cambodia from 1860 to 1904. In 1863 he signed the treaty that made Cambodia a French protectorate, and in the 1860s he moved the royal court from Oudong to Phnom Penh, where the Royal Palace was built in his reign.

Norodom I, king of Cambodia from 1860 to 1904. Photo: Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0

Historical figure details
Khmer name	ព្រះបាទនរោត្តម
Also known as	King Norodom; Norodom Boromreamtevada
Roles	King of Cambodia
Period	1860 to 1904
Born	1834
Died	1904
Country	Cambodia
Subjects	History & Remembrance

Family

Norodom was a son of King Ang Duong and succeeded him. Canby Publications gives his life span as 1834 to 1904. Sounds of Angkor calls King Sisowath a half-brother of Norodom and of Prince Si Votha. Sisowath came to the throne after him, on April 27, 1904. Tourism Cambodia lists Norodom among the kings crowned at Oudong.

Siam and France

In the reign of his father, Cambodia was a vassal of Siam and had lost Battambang, Sisophon and Siem Reap to it. The Cambodian Information Center writes that Norodom turned to France to get free of Siam's hold. He signed the Treaty of Protection with France in 1863, while the capital was still at Oudong.

Move to Phnom Penh

Canby Publications writes that a temporary wooden palace was put up in Phnom Penh in 1863, a little north of the present site. The first palace on that site was designed by the architect Neak Okhna Tepnimith Mak and built by the protectorate in 1866. In that year Norodom moved the court to it from Oudong, and Phnom Penh became the official capital the year after. Other sources date the move to 1865, among them the Phnom Penh Post and, in Khmer, Fresh News, and Cambodianess dates the new palace to that year. The Phnom Penh Post gives his name in the longer form King Norodom Boromreamtevada. Angkor Database gives both years for the start of the new palace.

In an interview with Cambodianess, the scholar Ang Choulean dates the start of the water festival in Phnom Penh, Bon Om Touk, perhaps to Norodom's reign and the move of the capital from Oudong.

Royal Palace

The first Throne Hall was built of wood in 1869 and 1870, in his reign, and was taken down in 1915. Napoleon III of France gave Norodom an iron pavilion, first built for the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which stands south of the Throne Hall. The temple of the Silver Pagoda, its library and its galleries were first built between 1892 and 1902 under Norodom. Lonely Planet writes that the first temple was of wood and that Norodom apparently drew on Wat Phra Kaew in Bangkok for it.

An equestrian statue of Norodom, finished by the French artist Eude in Paris in 1875, was placed in the pagoda grounds in 1892. King Sihanouk added a canopy over it in 1953 to honor him after independence. His ashes are kept in a stupa there, built in 1908.

Court arts

Norodom's court kept a troupe of about 500 dancers, which Sounds of Angkor contrasts with the hundred or so under Sisowath. A book page on Angkor Database describes how they were split into three troupes, the first led by his first wife, Princess Khun Tanh. Sounds of Angkor credits the French photographer Émile Gsell with the earliest pictures of the court's mahori orchestra, taken in Phnom Penh around 1870 and 1871.

References