Historical figure
Sisowath
ស៊ីសុវត្ថិ
Sisowath (ស៊ីសុវត្ថិ) was king of Cambodia from 1904 to 1927.[1][2] In 1906 he made the first visit of a Cambodian king to France, taking the dancers of the royal palace with him.[3][4]
Early life
Sisowath was a son of King Ang Duong and a half-brother of King Norodom and Prince Si Votha.[1] He was born in 1840, a year before Votha.[1][5] In 1856 Ang Duong sent King Rama IV of Siam a letter asking for the return of two of his sons, Norodom and Sisowath, to help him govern and protect Cambodia. Siam sent the two princes back the next year. Before their return, Rama IV gave them new names, Norodom Prom Barirak and Sisowath Preah Keovea.[5]
A revolt in 1861 and 1862, which the historian Lawrence Palmer Briggs ties to Votha, drove Norodom out of the kingdom. Briggs wrote that Sisowath put it down with some help from a French gunboat.[6] When Norodom left for Battambang in August 1861, he put Sisowath in charge of defending the royal city of Oudong. A Thai chronicle of the reign of Rama IV records that the Siamese king then put Sisowath in charge of Cambodian affairs while Norodom was out of the kingdom. The same chronicle says Rama IV thought at one stage of placing Sisowath on the throne in place of Norodom, who had not been crowned.[5] Late in 1863 Norodom had Sisowath, who seemed to be more popular than he was, taken to Bangkok against his will. Sisowath became a monk there.[5]
Reign
Sisowath came to the throne after Norodom on April 25, 1904[6] or April 27, 1904.[1] Sources differ on the year of his coronation. Briggs dates it to April 26, 1906.[6] The writer Amitav Ghosh wrote that the king had been crowned two years before that voyage of 1906.[4] He reigned until his death in 1927.[1][5]
Sisowath made several major additions to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. The Phochani Pavilion, an open hall built as a theater for classical dance, was added in 1907 and inaugurated in 1912. From 1913 to 1919 several old buildings were pulled down, and the Chanchhaya Pavilion and the Throne Hall were replaced and expanded. The Chanchhaya Pavilion was rebuilt in 1913 and 1914 on the design of the wooden pavilion it replaced. The new Throne Hall was built in 1917, and Sisowath inaugurated it in 1919.[2]
Visit to France, 1906
On May 10, 1906, the 66-year-old king sailed from Saigon on the French liner Amiral-Kersaint.[4] With him went nearly a hundred classical dancers and musicians of the palace in Phnom Penh.[4] The ship reached Marseille on the morning of June 11.[4] In Marseille his eldest daughter, Princess Soumphady, sat among the dancers and drew the eyes of the crowd.[4] The troupe danced at the colonial exhibition in Marseille.[1][3] No audience in Europe had seen Cambodian classical dance before.[4] Briggs wrote that the king was warmly received and stayed in France while France and Siam negotiated their treaty of 1907.[6]
In July 1906 the French sculptor Auguste Rodin first saw the dancers at a special performance at the Pré Catelan theater in Paris.[3][1] He followed them to Marseille and drew them until they sailed on July 20.[1] In about a week he made some 150 studies of their poses,[3][1] drawn and later colored with watercolor[3] or painted in gouache.[1]
Royal dance troupe
The royal ballet was much smaller under Sisowath than under Norodom: about a hundred dancers against five hundred.[1] In 1913 it had eight principal dancers, 66 to 70 other dancers and about 40 girls in training. It performed mainly for the king's guests, in dances and masked plays drawn from the Reamker epic. A 1910 film shows the costumes and tall tiaras of the dancers at his court.[1]
Return of Battambang and Angkor
On March 23, 1907, France and Siam signed a treaty under which Siam returned Battambang, Sisophon and Siem Reap, with Angkor, to Cambodia.[6][7] Briggs counted the accession of the popular Sisowath among the events that moved France to press for the provinces' return.[6]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Patrick Kersalé, Sounds of Angkor, King Sisowath's Ballet (updated December 5, 2023)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Canby Publications, Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh (undated)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Musée Rodin, Rodin et les danseuses cambodgiennes: sa dernière passion (undated; in French)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Asia Society, Amitav Ghosh, Dancing in Cambodia (undated)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Australian National University, Bun Srun Theam, Cambodia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Quest for Survival, 1840 to 1863 (1981), master's thesis, copy on Angkor Database
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 The Far Eastern Quarterly, Lawrence Palmer Briggs, The Treaty of March 23, 1907 between France and Siam and the Return of Battambang and Angkor to Cambodia (1946), copy on Angkor Database
- ↑ Cambodian Information Center, Preah Vihear: A Khmer Heritage (undated)