History

One figure strides across modern Cambodian history―Norodom Sihanouk. From his accession to the throne of Cambodia in 1941 until his extravagant funeral ceremony in 2013, the prince turned ‘king father’ in later life never dodged controversy. But this is not a biography of Sihanouk; the focus is upon the final decades of the French protectorate, the rise of a counter-elite and winning of Cambodia’s independence.

Cambodian is in many respects a typical Southeast Asian language, whose syntax at least on first acquaintance seems to approximate that of any SVO pidgin. On closer acquaintance, however, because of the richness of its idioms, the language seems to be a forbiddingly alien form of “Desesperanto” – a language of which one can read a page and understand every word individually, and have no inkling of what the page was all about.

In this clear and concise volume, author David Chandler provides a timely overview of Cambodia, a small but increasingly visible Southeast Asian nation.

The study of Cambodian religion has long been hampered by a lack of easily accessible scholarship. This impressive new work by Ian Harris thus fills a major gap and offers English-language scholars a book-length, up-to-date treatment of the religious aspects of Cambodian culture.

The Khmer Rouge revolution turned Cambodia into grisly killing fields, as the Pol Pot regime murdered or starved to death a million and a half of Cambodia's eight million inhabitants.

The Cambodian Church was first planted among the rice farmers of North-West Cambodia in the mid-1920s. Growth was slow and painful. Then fifty years of nearly fruitless toil culminated in the incredible decade of the 1970s, when joyous spiritual awakening was juxtaposed with indescribable devastation.

Early Indianized Kingdom of Funan, Government, Politics, Economy, People of Cambodia.

Archaeological evidence indicates that parts of the region now called Cambodia were inhabited during the first and second millennia B.C. by peoples having a Neolithic culture. By the first century A.D., the inhabitants had developed relatively stable, organized societies, which had far surpassed the primitive stage in culture and technical skills.

Beginning with a definition of who the Cambodians are, this fully illustrated history then tracks back to the earliest kingdoms before 800 AD, followed by an investigation of the creation of the magnificent city of Angkor and Cambodia’s centuries of greatness up to 1400 AD. The following chapter describes the times from 1400–1860, which were centuries of crisis, succeeded by the recovery during next 100 years when the country came under the influence of the French.

384 pages packed with (updated) information, illustrations and detailed maps, yet delivered in a portable, easy-to-use format. Focusing on the Angkor temples is the lightest, and the smallest in size, of the Angkor guide books offering more than a brief introduction to the site.

Temples and killing fields, mighty rivers and impenetrable forests, a past filled with glory and decline Cambodia is a land of contrasts. A millennia ago it was an empire at the height of its power, building the vast temple complexes of Angkor. Now, a thousand years later, ravaged by conflict and a genocidal civil war, Cambodia finds itself struggling with democracy, beset by corruption and on the lowest end of the global spectrum of economic wealth.