LOST GODDESSES: The Denial of Female Power in Cambodian History
by Dr. Trudy Jacobsen (NIAS Press, 2008)
Excerpts from Chapter Five: Hostages, Heroines and Hostilities:
[Continued from this prior KI Media posting
provided by a reader of KI-Media:
Discussions were underway between the Thai and Vietnamese for the resolution of the Cambodian problem, resulting in a compromise whereby both Ang Duong and Ang Mei would rule as co-sovereigns […]
Mei’s story is told dispassionately in the Cambodian chronicles, where she is portrayed as a puppet of Vietnamese emperors and officials; some later writers do not even mention her at all, glossing over the period of her rule as one in which Emperor Gia Long made Cambodia into a colony. This is because her reign has been perceived as synonymous with the Vietnamese ‘occupation’ of Cambodia, a period that left deep scars upon the Cambodian psyche […]
The connection between Mei and Vietnamese annexation of Cambodia partly facilitated the identification of female political power with national humiliation […] Walter F. Vella implies that the Vietnamese used a pre-existing negative association between women and political power in order to weaken Cambodian internal politics.
[…]
The reign of Ang Chan, not Ang Mei, was the beginning of Vietnamese interference in the social, political and economic life of Cambodians; they had already been in control of Cambodian territory around Prei Nokor for over fifty years. Unlike the Thai, who were content to allow Cambodia to retain its traditions (which in any case differed only slightly from their own), the Vietnamese sought to impose their own customs. Ang Chan was ordered by the Vietnamese to relocate his capital from Udong to Phnom Penh, where Vietnamese storehouses and barracks were constructed. By 1816, Gia Dich Tong Chi, a Vietnamese advisor in Cambodia, reported that Cambodia had adopted Vietnamese clothing styles, which aggravated the oknha. Thai records relate that the Vietnamese forced Cambodians to dismantle their Theravada Buddhist wats and viharas. In 1816, Ang Chan was ordered to recruit 5,000 workers to excavate a canal linking Chaudoc and Hatien, some seventy kilometers apart. The 500 supervisors were solely Vietnamese, who beat some of the workers to death for infractions. One Cambodian man was decapitated and his head placed on a stake in order to intimidate other Cambodian workers. Conditions such as these only exacerbated the resentment that many Cambodians felt towards the Vietnamese for usurping Cambodian territory and may have contributed to the rebellion against them, led by a monk, Kai, in 1820.
[p. 114-116]
4 comments:
Khmer in the coutry can't learn their own history.
Khmer oversea those with real master and phD should start teaching and writing.
Don't let our enemy triump over us.
Rise up khmer people. Show some self respect.
This is an awesome history.
We need to write our own history. we have our intellectual Khmer oversea who well educated and living in the free world.
Please let stand up together and show VIetnam that Khmer is as tough as any human on this earth.
Long Live Khmer People!
i think it is good to know history, that's how a country and people reformed and improved; they learned from their past. yes, everyone should know history, bad or good, it's a history lesson. everybody in the world learn history in school, so should cambodia.
and khmer history goes back since first a.d. this is just a section of history or a fraction of khmer history. of course, all history has its ups and downs period. the way i see it, khmer history was very colorful, very interesting, indeed, you know!
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