The tyranny of proximity: Power and mobility in colonial Cambodia, 1863-1954

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 421-443

  Edwards, Penny ^a  

^a AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM; POLITICAL POWER; POPULAR PROTEST;

ASIA; CAMBODIA; EURASIA; SOUTHEAST ASIA;

EID: 33748470993     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463406000725     Document Type: Article

References (120)

1. Oknya Sann, 'Secdey priepbi srok bidaem ning aelow' [A comparison between our country formerly and now], Srok Khmer, 7 (Jan. 1928): 5.
2. Elizabeth Bishop, 'The Map' (1946), www.poetryconnect.net/poets/ Elizabeth_Bishop/65
3. Anonymous, 'Le Cambodge', Revue Indo-Chinoise [henceforth RI] (1893): 158. The quotation is from Archives d'Outre-Mer (AOM) INDO, GGI 10042, Résident Général of Cambodia to Governor of Cochinchina, 1 July 1886.
4. Benedict Anderson, Language and power: Exploring political cultures in Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 43.
5. Ingrid Muan, 'Citing Angkor: The Cambodian arts in the age of restoration' (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2001), p. 16
6. Quoting George Groslier, 'La fin d'un art', Revue des Arts Asiatiques, 6, 3 (1929-30): 180.
7. Muan, 'Citing Angkor', p. 18.
8. Penny Edwards, 'Cambodge: The cultivation of a nation, 1860-1945' (Ph.D. diss., Monash University, 1999).
9. Oknya Suttantaprija's account has been published as Suttantaprija in, Nirieh Nokor Vat/Un pélériuage à Angkor en 1909 (Phnom Penh: Buddhist Institute, 1969); it first appeared in Kambuja Surya newspaper in 1934.
10. A short history of the Buddhist Institute, ed. and tr. Penny Edwards (Phnom Penh: Buddhist Institute, 2005), pp. 10-11, 13-39.
11. Ana Maria Alonso, 'The politics of space, time and substance: State formation, nationalism and ethnicity', Annual Review of Anthropology, 23 (1994): 379-405.
12. For more on this theme, see Penny Edwards, 'On home ground: Settling land and domesticating difference in the "non-settler" colonies of Burma and Cambodia', Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 4, 3 (2003).
13. James T. Clifford, Routes: Travel and translation in the late twentieth century (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1997).
14. The quotation is from Arjun Appadurai, 'Putting hierarchy in its place', Cultural Anthropology, 3, 1 (1988): 39.
15. Pierre de la Brosse, 'Dans les provinces cambodgiennes rétrocédees (I)', RI (1907): 1156.
16. Étienne Lunet de Lajonquière, 'La rétrocession des provinces cambodgiennes', Bulletin du Comité de l'Asie Française, 8,87 (1908): 227. The survey is in National Archives of Cambodia (NAC), RSC 10003, 'État des sala le long de la route de Phnom Penh à Kampot'.
17. See Étienne Lunet de Lajonquière, 'Cambodge', Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême Orient, 8 (1908): 420;
18. And Félicien Challaye, 'Angkor', La Revue de Paris, 29, 8 (April 1922): 787.
19. The quotation is from Paul Collard, Cambodge et Cambodgiens (Paris: Société d'Éditions Géographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales, 1925), p. 63.
20. Lunet de Lajonquière, 'Rétrocession des provinces cambodgiennes', pp. 227-8.
21. John Tully, 'Cambodia in Sisowath's reign' (Ph.D. diss., Monash University, 1993), pp. 98-9, 138-42; quotation from p. 139.
22. Pierre de la Brosse, 'Le territoire de Battambang: Aperçus politiques', RI (1907): 1235.
23. Pierre de la Brosse, 'La rétrocession des anciennes provinces cambodgiennes', RI (1907): 1088, 1091.
24. Lunet de Lajonquière, 'Rétrocession des provinces cambodgiennes', pp. 227-8.
25. Anne Hansen, 'Ways of the world: Moral discernment and narrative ethics in a Cambodian Buddhist text' (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2000), pp. 3-4.
26. Stephen Kern, The culture of time and space 1890-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).
27. Albert Tissandier, Cambodge et Java: Ruines khmeres et javanaises (Paris: G. Masson, 1896), p. 4.
28. Quotations from Charles Le Myre de Vilers, 'Preface', in Maurice Rondet-Saint, Choses de l'Indochine contemporaine, 2nd edn (Paris: Plon, 1916), p. xxii. An example of an official tour of inspection is the following comment. 'Last Wednesday I journeyed along the banks of the Great River as far as Krouc Chmar', wrote the French Representative in Cambodia to the Governor of Cochinchina in September 1884, 'and noticed that everywhere was calm' (AOM INDO, GGI 12504, Rep. of Protectorate of Cambodia to Governor of Cochinchina, 26 Sept. 1884).
29. Tissandier, Cambodge et Java, mentions the railway-steamer connection (p. 4). On the CMF's expansion see Les colonies françaises III: Colonies et protectorats de l'Indochine, ed. Louis Henrique (Paris: Maison Quantin, 1889), pp. 120-1, 174. Battambang had previously exported most of its produce overland to Bangkok; after the CMF was set up, large quantities of rice, dried fish, animal skins, spices, silk and ivory were shipped eastward to Cochinchina.
30. Henrique, Colonies françaises, pp. 120-1, 174.
31. Representative of the Protectorate to Governor of Cochinchina, 26 Sept. 1884. On Pavie's work see also AOM INDO, GGI 12504, Representative of the Protectorate to Governor of Cochinchina, 26 Aug. 1884 in the same file. The 1884 surveyor's report is in GGI 11058, M. Martin to Chef de Cabinet of the Governor of Cochinchina, 9 Dec. 1884.
32. Pierre de la Brosse, 'Le territoire de Battambang: Notes économiques', RI (1907): 1330.
33. The prince's comment is in Henri-Ph. d'Orléans, L'âme du voyageur (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1902), pp. 296-7. The road's popularity was due to its linkage to Chantaboun in Thailand and recently opened gem mines at Pailin.
34. Groslier, 'Fin d'un art', pp. 179-80
35. Muan, 'Citing Angkor', p. 16. The 147-kilometre road from Phnom Penh to Kampot was nearly finished, but the administration was still looking for funds to complete paving.
36. A. Raquez, 'Cambodge: Notes du voyage', RI (1903): 953-6.
37. AOM FP, APC 46 1, Son Diep, Tri-Phu [Prefect] of Sóc Trǎng, to Auguste Pavie, 15 May 1904.
38. Suttantiprija, Nirieh Nokorvat, pp. 8-11, 16-17, 40-1.
39. De la Brosse, 'Rétrocession des anciennes provinces cambodgiennes', p. 1084.
40. Chheat Sreang, 'The Cambodian khum from 1897 to 1919 and its contemporary relevance' (M.A. thesis, Royal University of Phnom Penh, 2004).
41. For the broader Southeast Asian context see Robert Elson, 'International commerce, the state and society: Economic and social change', in Cambridge history of Southeast Asia, ed. Nicholas Tarling, vol. II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 165-6.
42. Lunet de Lajonquière, 'Rétrocession des provinces cambodgiennes', pp. 227-8.
43. AOM INDO, RSC 466, Conseil des Ministres No. 103, 'Preahkoronajie ammcah jiwit le tboung drong preareicanunia prompung Sa Dra' (undated circular pursuant to meeting of 3 Sept. 1909).
44. AOM INDO, RSC 27, Telegram No. 215, 20 Nov. 1904, Résident Supérieur of Cambodia (RSC) to Résidents of Kandal, Kampot, Takeo, Kompong Cham and Pursat; Telegram No 230, 29 Nov. 1904, RSC to Résident of Kompong Cham. The sample is taken from telegrams 120-230 for November 1904.
45. David Chandler, A history of Cambodia, 2nd edn (North Sydney, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1992), p. 152.
46. Joseph Conrad, Youth, heart of darkness, the end of the tether (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1967), pp. 70-1.
47. George Groslier, A l'ombre d'Angkor (Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1916), pp. 153-4, describing the road from Angkor Vat to Banteay Chmar.
48. Lunet de Lajonquière, 'Cambodge', p. 420.
49. Léon de Beylié, Les ruines d'Angkor (Paris: Leroux, 1909); see the dedication on the Frontispiece, and p. 28.
50. The auto trip is mentioned in Bruno Dagens, Angkor: La forêt de pierre (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), pp. 84-5.
51. NAC, RSC 8353, Administrateur des Services Civils, Résident of Siem Reap, to RSC, 19 July 1925.
52. NAC, RSC 24127, 'Extrait du registre des déliberations de la Commission Municipale Consultative de la Ville de Phnom Penh, séance du 9 avril 1915'.
53. Groslier, 'Fin d'un art', pp. 179-80
54. The bus is mentioned in Michel Igout, Phnom Penh then and now (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1991), p. 133.
55. Alain Forest, Le Cambodge et la colonisation française. Histoire d'une colonisation sans heurts (1897-1920) (Paris: Harmattan, 1980), p. 233. Forest notes that some administrators blamed the success of the 1885 insurgency against the French on the state of the roads.
56. AOM INDO, GGI 10052, Representative General to Governor of Cochinchina, 1 July 1886.
57. AOM INDO, GGI 12661, Representative General par interim to Governor of Cochinchina, 7 Sept. 1885. On the allocation, see the correspondence between these two offices dated 17 and 18 Aug. 1885, in GGI, 12665.
58. AOM IFM 46, APC1 (Illegible) of Phnom Penh to Auguste Pavie, 11th Regiment of the Cambodian Infantry, 20 Nov. 1910.
59. On the reaction to military service see Adrien Pannetier, Notes cambodgiennes: Au coeur du pays Khmer (Paris: Payot, 1921), p. 140.
60. Paul Alinot, Géographie générale de l'Indochine Frauçaise (Saigon: Albert Portail, 1915), p. 63.
61. Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot came to power (London: Zed Books, 1981), pp. 19-20.
62. AOM INDO, GGI 2576, Prince Pinnoret, Lycée de Limoges to M. Capus, Delegate of the Governor General of Indochina (GGI), Paris, 1 Aug. 1914
63. Prince Watchayavong to GGI Delegate, 21 Aug. (patriotism) and 22 Aug. (request for permission) 1914. It seems that permission was refused: In January 1918 Watchayavong was studying for his Baccalauréat and, with his grandfather Sisowath's support, seeking admission to the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (AOM FM INDO, NF 572, King Sisowath to RSC, 22 Jan. 1918).
64. An anonymous letter containing these allegations, dated 19 Apr. 1917 and attributed to exiled Prince Mayura, is in AOM, INDO, NF 564, RSC note to GGI (undated); Sisowath's proclamation is in 'Proclamation de Sa Majesté à tous Princes, mandarins de la capitale et des provinces et à toute la population de toutes races du Cambodge', RI (1918): 213-14.
65. On Monivong see Areno Iukanthor, Destin d'empire (Paris: Pierre Bossuet, 1935), p. 100.
66. AOM FM INDO, NF 28, RSC Report to GGI, 29 Jan. 1916, 'Manifestations hostiles occasionées par des convocations de prestataires contre les impots'. A full account of the protests is in Milton Osborne, 'Peasant politics in Cambodia: The 1916 Affair', Modern Asian Studies, 12,2 (1978): 217-13
67. see also Tully, 'Cambodia in Sisowath's reign', pp. 226-35.
68. The Résident of Kompong Cham, for example, who had been advised to tour villages and prepare Cambodians for the forthcoming public works schemes and corvée labour requests, had simply informed the provincial governor, who had told the Meekhum (commune chiefs) 'as per the old practice'; see the 29 Jan. 1916 report 'Manifestations hostiles'.
69. AOM FM INDO, NF 570, GGI to Minister of Colonies, 'Événements du Cambodge en janvier et fevrier 1916', 31 Mar. 1916; the protests as a reminder of the monarch's significance are noted in the 29 Jan. 1916 report 'Manifestations hostiles'.
70. Marie Alexandrine Martin, Cambodia: A shattered society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 39.
71. Georges Groslier, La route du plus fort (Paris: Ed. Jaloux, 1925), pp. 144 (isolated regions), 150 (order and discipline, naked burning road).
72. Other examples of such literature include Henry Daguerches, Le Kilomètre 83 (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1913)
73. and André Malraux, La voie royale (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1930).
74. Martin, Cambodia: A shattered society, p. 39, citing AOM ASO, NF 202, carton 181, letter of 8 Oct. 1917.
75. Marguerite Duras, interview with Xavière Gauthier, in Duras and Gauthier, Les parleuses (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1974)
76. For Duras' literary account of her years in Kampot, see Duras, Un barrage contre la Pacifique (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1950).
77. Confidential report of Doctor Duffosé to Résident Supérieur Maspéro, cited in Chhim-Toum dit Pirén to President of the United Nations Committee, 12 Sept. 1946 (document from the Son Ngoc Thanh Papers, Monash University Library).
78. For contemporary reports see A. Fontaine Laporte, 'Les origines de l'affaire Bardez', in La Voix Libre, 9 Jan. 1926 (reprinted from La Libre Cochinchine)
79. La Cloche Fêlée, 26 Jan. 1926
80. And L'Argus Indochinois, 12 Mar. 1927.
81. See also Tully, 'Cambodia in Sisowath's reign', p. 312.
82. Confidential report of Doctor Duffosé see also Horace Bleackley, A tour in southern Asia (Indo-China, Malaya, Java, Sumatra and Ceylon 1925-1926 (London: John Lane, 1928), pp. 45-55.
83. In 1914, one Cambodian wrote to the administration demanding compensation for the loss of his plot of land stretching from the west of the prison in Phnom Penh to the quay of the 'Abattoir Canal', where he had lived for 12 years and which had been devoured by the construction of a new road. In 1917, Oknha Keth, Inspector of Legal Affairs and Cambodian Administration, complained that construction of the road to Kampot had ruined drainage from his coconut plantation; the administration agreed to build ducts along the road. See AOM INDO, RSC 466, Minister of War and Education to Resident Supérieur, letters dated 24 Dec. 1914 and 21 June 1917.
84. David Chandler, 'The assassination of Resident Bardez (1925): A premonition of revolt in colonial Cambodia', in Chandler, Facing the Cambodian past (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 1996), p. 146.
85. ìeme trimestre', 31 Oct. 1922.
86. ìeme trimestre', 24 Jan. 1924.
87. er trimestre'.
88. Chandler, 'Assassination of Résident Bardez', pp. 148-50.
89. ìeme trimestre', 22 July 1925.
90. Statistics for 1929 are from Groslier, 'Fin d'un art', pp. 179-80
91. the lack of rural traffic is mentioned in Georges Groslier, Eaux et lumières: Journal de route sur le Mékong cambodgien (Paris: Société d'Éditions Géographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales, 1932), p. 80.
92. One French author quipped regarding a journey from Siem Reap to Kompong Thom that 'if the car had broken down', the passengers would have all 'died of hunger'; Raymond Recouly, A travers l'Indochine et les pays voisins: Pistes, fleuves et jungles (Paris: Éditions de France, 1932), pp. 321-2.
93. ìeme trimestre'; 'Chemins de fer royaux du Siam', Extrême-Asie, 42 (1929), advertising supplement, p. 1.
94. AOM INDO, GGI 65547, RSC 'Rapport politique', 13 July 1932.
95. AOM FM INDO, NF 577, RSC confidential report to GGI, No.499-SPX, 'Voyage de S.M. Monivong dans les provinces de son Royaume', 18 July 1933.
96. AOM FM INDO, NF 577, Marius Moutet to Direction des Affaires Politiques, Minister of Colonies, Note No. 932, 25 June 1936. Recollections of the incident were provided by Non Hach's widow Rem Tan and son Vinit Nou, interviewed together with his son Voravid Nou, Sydney, 3 Mar. 1998.
97. See also 'Une irréparable faute politique', Le Khmer, 18 May 1936.
98. 'Cambodge: Le Vice-Amiral d'Escadre Decoux GGI rend visite au nouveau souverain,' L'avenir du Tonkin, 5 June 1941.
99. Maurice Ducoroy, Ma trahison en Indochine (Paris: Éditions Inter-Nationales, 1949), p. 119
100. see also Christopher Goscha, Vietnam or Indochina? Contesting concepts of space in Vietnamese nationalism 1887-1954 (Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 1995), p. 80.
101. Anthony Reid, 'A saucer model of Southeast Asian identity', Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science, 27, 1 (1999): 12.
102. Michel de Certeau, The practice of everyday life, tr. Steven Randall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. 121.
103. Here as elsewhere my thoughts are inspired by Thongchai Winichakul's Siam mapped: A history of the geobody of a nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994).
104. Meron Benvenisti, Sacred landscape: The buried history of the Holy Land since 1948, tr. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 55.
105. AOM, INDO, RSC 466, Letter from Ponn Chakrey to RSC, 29 Jan. 1919 and Note from RSC to Ponn Chakry, Nov. 1919.
106. Maurice Barrès, Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme, tome I (Paris: Plon Nourrit, 1925), pp. 20, 114.
107. See, for example, 'Driw loap Krong Kampbujie cenbi knong paenday look ceen ru away?' [Must Cambodia be deleted from the map of the world?]; and 'Kmae oubbchnamdachay men prum cen chngai bi pteah kluen' [Khmers refuse to go far from their homes], Nagaravatta, 19 Nov. 1938 and 18 May 1940 respectively.
108. Edward Brown, Cochin-China and my experience of it: A seaman's narrative of his adventures and sufferings during a captivity among Chinese pirates and afterwards during a journey on foot across that country in the years 1857-58 (London: Charles Westerton, 1861), p. 20.
109. Albert Bouinais and A. Paulus, L'Indo-Chine Française contemporaine: Cochinchine, Cambodge, Tonkin, Annam (Paris: Challamel Ainé, 1885), pp. 574-5
110. De la Brosse, 'Territoire de Battambang: Notes économiques', p. 1329.
111. See, for example, the Tonkin travelogue 'Bi Krong Kampujie tiw dal Tongking' [From Cambodia to Tonkin], Nagaravatta, 17 July 1940.
112. Benedict Anderson, Imagined communities: Reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism, 2nd edn (New York: Verso, 1991), pp. 129-30.
113. Ibid., p. 114.
114. For more on this, see Edwads, 'Cambodge'.
115. Christopher Goscha, 'Beyond the colonizer and the colonized', in Songs at the edge of the forest: New reflections on Khmer Studies, ed. Judy Ledgerwood and Anne Hansen, forthcoming. The information on the student trips is from NAC 12443, 'Excursion of Khmer students from Soctrang to Cambodge', 27 Mar. 1937. I am grateful to the late Ingrid Muan for sending me her notes from this document in July 2000.
116. Alain Forest, Le culte des génies protecteurs au Cambodge: Analyse et traduction d'un corpus de textes sur les neak ta (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1992).
117. Ann Stoler, 'Developing historical negatives: Race and the (modernist) visions of a colonial state', in From the margins: Historical anthropology and its futures, ed. Brian Axel (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 157.
118. Christopher Pym, Mistapim in Cambodia (London: Charing Cross Book Club, 1960), pp. 72-5.
119. Stephen Heder, personal communication, Oct. 2002.
120. See Margaret Slocomb, 'The K5 gamble: National defence and nation building under the People's Republic of Kampuchea', Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32, 2 (2001): 195-210.