C

Cambodia

The spectacular ruin of Angkor Wat is an enduring icon of Cambodian archaeology and a powerful symbol of national identity. Europeans “discovered” this ruin in the mid-nineteenth century and ultimately attributed it to the ancestors of ethnic Khmers who live in Cambodia today. Cambodia was part of an area historically known as Indochina, a colonial entity controlled by the French from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Since French colonial archaeologists who worked in Cambodia also worked in other areas of Indochina, understanding the history of Cambodian archaeology requires some knowledge of the history of archaeology throughout Indochina, including work in the neighboring countries of Vietnam and Laos.

Indochinese archaeology began in earnest during the mid-nineteenth century and reached its apex in the first half of the twentieth century. During this time archaeology was a distinctly colonialist endeavor that was embedded in a broader mission civilisatrice (civilizing mission). Archaeology, epigraphy, and art history were undertaken by a host of colonial officials and administrators who believed that research on the cultures and history of this new French colony served as one means of gaining—and maintaining—colonial control over the region.

Since 1850 Cambodian archaeology has been characterized by two parallel archaeological traditions: one rooted in the humanities and the other in the natural sciences. The historical tradition focuses on the ancient civilizations of the region and combines architectural, art-historical, and epigraphic approaches with archaeological methods to study developments since the beginning of the Roman Empire (ca. 500 b.c.–a.d. 1432). The prehistoric tradition, drawing extensively from a geological background, studies the period before about 500 b.c. and has focused most of its attention on Holocene developments that culminated in the Bronze Age.

The Indochinese peninsula, which would ultimately become Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, attracted French commercial and missionary interests by the mid-nineteenth century. Despite great resistance by the Vietnamese, the French raised its flags in the southern and northern capitals (Saigon and Hanoi, respectively) by 1873. Cambodia, under a weak sovereign, acceded to the French in 1864, and the feuding kingdoms of Laos were unified between 1885 and 1899. Through military power and fueled by commercial interest, French Indochina was born.

The Impact of Nineteenth-Century Expeditions on European Knowledge of Cambodia’s Past

Several important expeditions were undertaken through the new French Indochina during the mid- and late nineteenth centuries to chart its territory, document the resources of the region, and seek potential trade routes to link the colony with markets in southern China. From 1858 to 1861 the French explorer and naturalist Henri Mouhot undertook three natural history expeditions that covered regions of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. Mouhot described the customs of the peoples he met during these travels, and in his January 1860 visit to northwestern Cambodia, he encountered the crumbling ruins of Angkor Wat. Mouhot died of a fever near Luang Prabang, Laos, in 1861. Two years later his