By Milton OsbornePhnom Penh Post, Issue 16 / 18, September 7 - 20, 2007
Gregor Muller's fascinating account of Cambodia's 'bad Frenchmen' in the nineteenth century is one of the more remarkable books to deal with the history of the kingdom after the French established their protectorate in 1863. It is therefore regrettable that its price of $135 will make it close to inaccessible, except for a prosperous or extremely dedicated few. That said, the fact that the book is in print is a matter for celebration.
In offering my enthusiastic review of this book I must declare more than one interest. Long before I had met Gregor Muller, he had been in touch with me in relation to a footnote-yes, a footnote--in a book I wrote more than 30 years ago. The footnote referred to the presence in Cambodia in the nineteenth century of a Frenchman named Frédéric Thomas-Caraman-usually referred to simply as Caraman--who seemed to me at the time to be at best an adventurer and at worst a carpetbagger.
But the man I had seen as a minor figure in the history of Cambodia struck Muller as a representative of a class of colonials that he wanted to study-men who did not conform to the standards and morals of those who served in the French administration. Having decided to pursue his investigation into Caraman, Muller displayed remarkable energy in searching out archival and personal information about this dubious figure in three countries, in 25 public and five private archives.
The account of his finding Caraman's dossier in the National Archives in Phnom Penh in 1997 is a story in itself. During the period of Khmer Rouge rule the archive building had lapsed into a state of dereliction, giving the chances of Muller's finding the dossier that I had seen in 1966 slim indeed. But Peter Arfanis, then serving as an Australian consultant in the rehabilitation of archives, promised to do his best to find the dossier when Muller asked for it, and did so within 24 hours.
From then on Muller hunted high and low to unravel Caraman's life and the lives of the other non-official Frenchmen who worked in Cambodia in the first few decades of the French presence in the kingdom. My second disclosure: he worked with such admirable energy I did all I could to encourage him, and my enthusiastic comments on the contents of the book, appearing on its back cover, are nothing more than its due.
The book is a wonderful read-erudite, often amusing in its detail of the all-too-human imperfections of the characters, and an important contribution to our understanding of life in a colonial setting. Caraman, who claimed without any justification to be of aristocratic descent, a 'count' no less, is the key figure discussed. He reached Cambodia in 1865, before Phnom Penh was once more made the kingdom's capital and almost immediately established a relationship with King Norodom I. This association waxed and waned over 20 years as he fell in and out of favour with the Cambodian monarch. One of his major agreements with the king, concluded in 1873, for the supply of a gilded screen to be located in the throne room, led to a legal confrontation between the Frenchman and Norodom that was only finally resolved in 1881.
There is a range of other 'bad Frenchmen' and women who appear throughout the book-forgotten figures such as Le Faucheur, Blancscubé and the Widow Marrot, to name a few. Le Faucheur was one of the first Frenchmen to establish himself as a merchant in Cambodia after 1863. He seems to have been constantly in trouble, not least over allegations of rape, but including violence towards pepper growers in Kampot, and the claim that he had buried one of his employees alive while in an alcoholic stupor. As Muller notes, Le Faucheur's "reputation was so bad that almost anything that people said about him was thought to be true." Yet he survived in Phnom Penh until his death in 1874.
Blanscubé, a devious politician and lawyer based in Saigon, and best known as a spokesman for Indians living in Cochinchina, attempted unsuccessfully to mediate a settlement in the gilded screen affair. He sided with the Cambodian king when Governor Thomson imposed an unequal treaty on the king in 1884, but then, having been denounced by others for his role in supporting Norodom, switched sides completely to proclaim the virtues of Thomson's actions and condemn the supposed role of Madame Marrot.
Madame Marrot opened the first hotel in Saigon in the 1860s and did not come to Phnom Penh until 1875. She was a shrewd businesswoman who worked with Caraman but managed to avoid the succession of business failures that dogged his life in Phnom Penh. Her association with Norodom seems to have survived his frequently owing her money, and there is no doubt that she opposed Thomson's actions in 1884. In the end her close contact and sympathy for the king led to her having to leave Cambodia. An official French report denounced her supposed role in encouraging Norodom to resist French demands for reform.
Beyond the anecdotes and the characters involved, the book has much to tell us about the relations between official Frenchmen and the Cambodian king and court as well as about education and justice in nineteenth century Phnom Penh and about relations between the sexes in a colonial setting before the rigidities of later years had determined how European men should behave towards Asian women. In all of this, Muller's 'Epilogue' provides a profound commentary on the broader question of the nature of relations between colonisers and colonised in nineteenth century Cambodia. The commentary surely has relevance to other colonial experiences.
"Caraman's life and the lives of other colonial pioneers in Cambodia," Muller writes, "demonstrate that their physical proximity, even intimacy, with sections of the host society correlated with an almost complete detachment from that society's world of meaning. The French lacked the capacity, and sometimes also the will, to understand their environment and to communicate successfully with their indigenous counterparts." (page 220)
This is not a book for scholars alone. Written in clear English-not Muller's mother tongue-it is for anyone with more than a passing interest in Cambodian history. Filled with anecdotes, some amusing, some genuinely tragic, and admirable for its insight, it deserves the widest readership.
Milton Osborne is a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy institute for International Policy, Sydney, and an Adjunct Professor of Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra.
In offering my enthusiastic review of this book I must declare more than one interest. Long before I had met Gregor Muller, he had been in touch with me in relation to a footnote-yes, a footnote--in a book I wrote more than 30 years ago. The footnote referred to the presence in Cambodia in the nineteenth century of a Frenchman named Frédéric Thomas-Caraman-usually referred to simply as Caraman--who seemed to me at the time to be at best an adventurer and at worst a carpetbagger.
But the man I had seen as a minor figure in the history of Cambodia struck Muller as a representative of a class of colonials that he wanted to study-men who did not conform to the standards and morals of those who served in the French administration. Having decided to pursue his investigation into Caraman, Muller displayed remarkable energy in searching out archival and personal information about this dubious figure in three countries, in 25 public and five private archives.
The account of his finding Caraman's dossier in the National Archives in Phnom Penh in 1997 is a story in itself. During the period of Khmer Rouge rule the archive building had lapsed into a state of dereliction, giving the chances of Muller's finding the dossier that I had seen in 1966 slim indeed. But Peter Arfanis, then serving as an Australian consultant in the rehabilitation of archives, promised to do his best to find the dossier when Muller asked for it, and did so within 24 hours.
From then on Muller hunted high and low to unravel Caraman's life and the lives of the other non-official Frenchmen who worked in Cambodia in the first few decades of the French presence in the kingdom. My second disclosure: he worked with such admirable energy I did all I could to encourage him, and my enthusiastic comments on the contents of the book, appearing on its back cover, are nothing more than its due.
The book is a wonderful read-erudite, often amusing in its detail of the all-too-human imperfections of the characters, and an important contribution to our understanding of life in a colonial setting. Caraman, who claimed without any justification to be of aristocratic descent, a 'count' no less, is the key figure discussed. He reached Cambodia in 1865, before Phnom Penh was once more made the kingdom's capital and almost immediately established a relationship with King Norodom I. This association waxed and waned over 20 years as he fell in and out of favour with the Cambodian monarch. One of his major agreements with the king, concluded in 1873, for the supply of a gilded screen to be located in the throne room, led to a legal confrontation between the Frenchman and Norodom that was only finally resolved in 1881.
There is a range of other 'bad Frenchmen' and women who appear throughout the book-forgotten figures such as Le Faucheur, Blancscubé and the Widow Marrot, to name a few. Le Faucheur was one of the first Frenchmen to establish himself as a merchant in Cambodia after 1863. He seems to have been constantly in trouble, not least over allegations of rape, but including violence towards pepper growers in Kampot, and the claim that he had buried one of his employees alive while in an alcoholic stupor. As Muller notes, Le Faucheur's "reputation was so bad that almost anything that people said about him was thought to be true." Yet he survived in Phnom Penh until his death in 1874.
Blanscubé, a devious politician and lawyer based in Saigon, and best known as a spokesman for Indians living in Cochinchina, attempted unsuccessfully to mediate a settlement in the gilded screen affair. He sided with the Cambodian king when Governor Thomson imposed an unequal treaty on the king in 1884, but then, having been denounced by others for his role in supporting Norodom, switched sides completely to proclaim the virtues of Thomson's actions and condemn the supposed role of Madame Marrot.
Madame Marrot opened the first hotel in Saigon in the 1860s and did not come to Phnom Penh until 1875. She was a shrewd businesswoman who worked with Caraman but managed to avoid the succession of business failures that dogged his life in Phnom Penh. Her association with Norodom seems to have survived his frequently owing her money, and there is no doubt that she opposed Thomson's actions in 1884. In the end her close contact and sympathy for the king led to her having to leave Cambodia. An official French report denounced her supposed role in encouraging Norodom to resist French demands for reform.
Beyond the anecdotes and the characters involved, the book has much to tell us about the relations between official Frenchmen and the Cambodian king and court as well as about education and justice in nineteenth century Phnom Penh and about relations between the sexes in a colonial setting before the rigidities of later years had determined how European men should behave towards Asian women. In all of this, Muller's 'Epilogue' provides a profound commentary on the broader question of the nature of relations between colonisers and colonised in nineteenth century Cambodia. The commentary surely has relevance to other colonial experiences.
"Caraman's life and the lives of other colonial pioneers in Cambodia," Muller writes, "demonstrate that their physical proximity, even intimacy, with sections of the host society correlated with an almost complete detachment from that society's world of meaning. The French lacked the capacity, and sometimes also the will, to understand their environment and to communicate successfully with their indigenous counterparts." (page 220)
This is not a book for scholars alone. Written in clear English-not Muller's mother tongue-it is for anyone with more than a passing interest in Cambodian history. Filled with anecdotes, some amusing, some genuinely tragic, and admirable for its insight, it deserves the widest readership.
Milton Osborne is a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy institute for International Policy, Sydney, and an Adjunct Professor of Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra.
3 comments:
Beside the viets, the french caused us so much pain and suffering. It started with the french colonization of Cambodia that when we go down hill and never rise again. I hate the fucking french. Let history show how evil the frech was.
oh man. the french colonizers in cambodia and vietnam were extremely bad. they were very flip-flop and careless. they used the local people against each other all the time.
the french also produced alot of stupid, snobbish, lazy, sleazy khmers. generations of ignorant and psychologically unstable khmers.
Sihaunok is perfect example of the french colonizer by-product. he's coo coo
Go alitle farther History just a story, do not dwell to much on it!
If you ware weak any one would prey on you!
Think what we should do now not to be a Zumbie ( Walking Death ).
Cambodiam with 90% youn?
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