Dark Ages of Cambodia - Domination By Siam and By Vietnam

Domination By Siam and By Vietnam

More than their conquest of Angkor a century and a half earlier, the Siamese capture of Lovek marked the beginning of a decline in Cambodia's fortunes. One possible reason for the decline was the labor drain imposed by the Siamese conquerors as they marched thousands of Khmer peasants, skilled artisans, scholars, and members of the Buddhist clergy back to their capital of Ayutthaya. This practice, common in the history of Southeast Asia, crippled Cambodia's ability to recover a semblance of its former greatness. A new Khmer capital was established at Odongk (Udong), south of Lovek, but its monarchs could survive only by entering into what amounted to vassal relationships with the Siamese and with the Vietnamese. In common parlance, Siam became Cambodia's "father" and Vietnam its "mother."

By the late fifteenth century, the Vietnamese - who, unlike other Southeast Asian peoples, had emerged from the Sinic civilization sphere- had completely absorbed the once most powerful maritime kingdom of Champa in central Vietnam. Thousands of Chams fled into Khmer territory. By the early seventeenth century, the Vietnamese had reached the Mekong Delta, which was inhabited by Khmer people. In 1620 the Khmer king Chey Chettha II (1618–28) married a daughter of Nguyễn Phúc Nguyên, one of the Nguyễn lords (1558–1778), who ruled southern Vietnam for most of the period of the Lê Dynasty (1428-1788). Three years later, Chey Chettha allowed the Vietnamese to establish a custom-house at Prey Nokor, near what is now Ho Chi Minh City (until 1975, Saigon). By the end of the seventeenth century, the region was under Vietnamese administrative control, and Cambodia was cut off from access to the sea. Trade with the outside world was possible only with Vietnamese permission.

There were periods in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, when Cambodia's neighbors were preoccupied with internal or external strife, that afforded the beleaguered country a breathing spell. The Vietnamese were involved in a lengthy civil war until 1672 (see the Trịnh–Nguyễn War for details), but upon its conclusion the Nguyễn Lords, who ruled in the south, promptly annexed sizable areas of Cambodian territory in the region of the Mekong Delta. For the next one hundred years they used the alleged mistreatment of Vietnamese colonists in the delta as a pretext for their continued expansion, as well as territorial concessions from inter-royalty marriage. By the end of the eighteenth century, they had extended their control to include the area encompassed in the late 1980s by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Vietnam).

Siam, which might otherwise have been courted as an ally against Vietnamese incursions in the eighteenth century, was itself involved in a new conflict with Burma. In 1767 the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya was besieged and destroyed. The Siamese quickly recovered, however, and soon reasserted their dominion over Cambodia. The youthful Khmer king, Ang Eng (1779–96), a refugee at the Siamese court, was installed as monarch at Odongk by Siamese troops. At the same time, Siam quietly annexed Cambodia's three northernmost provinces. In addition, the local rulers of the northwestern provinces of Batdambang and Siemreab (Siemreap) became vassals of the Siamese king, and these areas came under the Siamese sphere of influence.

A renewed struggle between Siam and Vietnam for control of Cambodia in the nineteenth century resulted in a period when Vietnamese officials, working through a puppet Cambodian king, ruled the central part of the country and attempted to force Cambodians to adopt Vietnamese customs. Several rebellions against Vietnamese rule ensued. The most important of these occurred in 1840 to 1841 and spread through much of the country. After two years of fighting, Cambodia and its two neighbors reached an accord that placed the country under the joint suzerainty of Siam and Vietnam. However, fearful of a longer past dominated by Thai incursions, under a separate attempt, Cambodia offered to reside under Vietnamese protectorship. At the behest of both countries, a new monarch, Ang Duong (1848–59), ascended the throne and brought a decade of peace and relative independence to Cambodia.

In their arbitrary treatment of the Khmer population, the Siamese and the Vietnamese were virtually indistinguishable. The suffering and the dislocation caused by war were comparable in many ways to similar Cambodian experiences in the 1970s. But the Siamese and the Vietnamese had fundamentally different attitudes concerning their relationships with Cambodia. The Siamese shared with the Khmer a common religion, mythology, literature, and culture. The Chakri kings at Bangkok wanted Cambodia's loyalty, tribute and land, 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.