Language and National Identity: Cambodia (by Steve Heder) - Introduction

Language and National Identity in Asia
Edited by Andrew Simpson
Oxford University Press, 2007

Chapter 13: CAMBODIA
by Dr. Steve Heder

13.1 INTRODUCTION

Since the early twentieth century, the Khmer language has been at the centre of a series of only partly successful attempts by Cambodian politicians to rework and re-present ethnic identities in Cambodian society into one with a unitary national core. Their lack of success reflects that of Khmer nationalist movements themselves, a failure all the more striking given the overwhelming linguistic hegemony of Khmer for a millennium in what is now Cambodia. The current Hun Sen-led political regime lacks a credible nationalist pedigree, and Cambodia now seems to be passing - some would say disappearing - into an era of Asianization within globalization, having never passed through a period of viable nationalist rule. Instead, after a series of at best weak and at worst catastrophically self-destructive regimes since the nine­teenth century - late classical, colonial, royalist, republican, communist, and liberal democratic - Cambodia still lacks an effective modern state and a self-sustaining national identity.

This chapter begins in section 13.2 with an outline of pre-colonial Cambodian history, looking at language and identity from prehistoric times, through the renowned Angkor period to subsequent polities and the establishment of a French Protectorate in 1863. In section 13.3, it considers French-Cambodian interaction in the elaboration of the idea of a Cambodian nation and discusses the role of language and Khmerization in Cambodian nationalism and political contestation up until the end of the French domination in Cambodia in 1953. Sections 13.4-7 - covering 1953 to 1991 - document the at first fitful and then accelerating advance of lingu­istic Khmerization in often fraught political contexts, including war, revolution, genocide, and renewed foreign domination: in independent Cambodia under Prince Sihanouk, then during the ill-fated Khmer Republic, on through the catastrophic years of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and thereafter under Vietnamese occupation in the 1980s. Finally, section 13.8 looks at issues of Khmer language use, national identity, foreign involvement, and multi-ethnic revivalism in contemporary Cambodia since the United Nations peace-keeping intervention of 1992-3, bringing the account up to 2006.

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I would like to thank the following, among others, for their many comments, corrections, criticisms, and suggestions regarding various earlier drafts of this chapter: Michel Rethy Antelme, Chan Sambath, David P. Chandler, Mike Davis, Penny Edwards, Ian Harris, Khing Hoc Dy, Helene Lavoix, Henri Locard, Laura McGrew, John Marston, Laura Summers, and Touch Bora. All have contributed to important improvements in the text, although not always in the ways their remarks intended, and the matters discussed here will, I hope, be the subject of much further research and debate.