Historical

Compiled by H. L. Shorto, Judith M. Jacob and E. H. S. Simmonds. Preface, index. "The bibliographies contained in this volume deal with two of the most complex and extensive of the language families which make up the linguistic jigsaw of South East Asia, ranging between them from the Yangtze to Malaya and from Assam to Tongking.

As a one-time resident of Phnom Penh and an authority on Southeast Asia, Milton Osborne provides a colorful account of the troubled history and appealing culture of Cambodia's capital city. Osborne sheds light on Phnom Penh's early history, when first Iberian missionaries and freebooters and then French colonists held Cambodia's fate in their hands.

The illicit traffic of art is an important problem that affects modern life all over the world. This work addresses this issue using the showcase of Cambodia, where looters systematically destroy cultural heritage. Beginning with an overview of Cambodian history and culture, it explores every aspect of the illicit traffic of Cambodian art.

Adoration and Glory is a celebration of centuries of artistic achievements of the Khmer peoples, a civilization nearly forgotten. The Khmer empire created one of the world's most glorious traditions of sculpture and architecture, inspired and influenced by the spiritual and in particular the Tantric, Hindu and Buddhist cultures and religions of India.

Cambodia is a history buff’s dream, with rich stories of empire and tyranny over the past 1,000 years. There are a variety of books and websites (some of which are listed in the Resources for Further Information section) that provide excellent summaries of Cambodia’s ancient and recent history. Wikipedia's site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia) provides a good overview. Cambodia is a successor state of the once-powerful Hindu and Buddhist Khmer Empire, which ruled most of the Indo-Chinese peninsula between the 11th and 14th centuries.

Originally published in 1951, it is said that A Dragon Apparent inspired Graham Greene to go to Vietnam and write The Quiet American. Norman Lewis traveled in Indo-China during the precarious last years of the French colonial regime. Much of the charm and grandeur of the ancient native civilizations survived until the devastation of the Vietnam War.

Excerpt from In the Far East: A Narrative of Exploration and Adventure in Cochin-China, Cambodia, Laos, and Siam:

A considerable portion of the Indo-Chinese peninsula is occupied by the extensive country of Cambodia, or Camboja, known to the natives as Kan-pou-chi. It extends from lat. 8° 47' to 15° N., along the basin of the Mekong, Makiang, or Cambodia river; and is bounded on the north by Laos; on the south, by the Gulf of Siam and the China Sea; on the east, by Cochin-China; and on the west, by Siam.

In 1871 at age 17 Frank Vincent Jr. dropped out of Yale University and, began "a systematic tour of the most interesting parts of the world." Arriving in Bangkok, Siam, Vincent desired to explore legends of a lost city of temples in the jungle as found in the papers of a Frenchman who had explored the region 10 years earlier, but who did not make it back alive.

Only one person has given us a first-hand account of the civilization of Angkor. This is the Chinese envoy, Zhou Daguan, who visited Angkor in 1296-97 and wrote A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People after his return to China. To this day Zhou's description of the royal palace, sacred buildings, women, traders, slaves, hill people, animals, landscapes, and everyday life remains a unique portrait of thirteenth-century Angkor at a time when its splendors were still intact.

This book unravels the formation of the modern concept of cultural heritage by charting its colonial, postcolonial-nationalist and global trajectories. By bringing to light many unresearched dimensions of the 12th Cambodian temple of Angkor Wat during its modern history, the study argues for a conceptual, connected history that unfolded within the transcultural interstices of European and Asian projects.