Page 2 of
5 Monarchic manipulation in
Cambodia By Geoff
Gunn
Still as Kershaw (2001: 27) allows,
not only did the advanced age of Sisowath (64)
make planning for the next reign immediately
pressing but - importantly - the French had
created a parallel and rival dynasty to the
Norodoms "and thus a new factor for instability,
though without detracting from the existing
priority of malleability". This was especially so,
not only because his sons were demonstrably
lacking merit, but some were even perceived as
anti-French. As explained below, eventually the
eldest surviving son of Sisowath, Monivong
(1927-41), would be chosen.
On March 10,
1906, Sisowath embarked on a voyage to France on
the Amiral de Kersaint, returning on August
20 the same year, evidently enchante with
the general experience, just as the
French were approving.
Meantime, special ceremonies were held to mark the
retrocession from Siam to Cambodia of Krabi along
with Battambang and Sisophon (Beau 1908), although
such territorial adjustments at the expense of
Siam would return to haunt the French in Cambodia.
As observed by Paul Luce, Resident
Superior of Cambodia, writing in March 1909,
several times King Sisowath had confidentially
confided his personal desires as to his designated
successor, namely Prince Monivong, who had
departed for France for studies. But, as Luce
replied to Sisowath, he could not guarantee a firm
approval on these questions.
As he
reported to Paris, Monivong presented the best
qualities of character and sincerity towards
France. He had achieved three years education in
France, was seen as a good student, and had made a
good impression in meeting the President of the
Republic. But, he warned, Monivong's attitude
could change over time. And the brother of King
Norodom had also proposed his son, although later
withdrawn his candidature (AOM Indo/NF/48/577 Paul
Luce, Resident Superieur au Cambodge a Gouverneur
General de l'Indochine, Phnom Penh, March 18,
1909). Returning home to Cambodia in 1909, a
graduate of a French military school, Sisowath
Monivong pursued a military career though also
brought into the inner decision making circle of
the Council of Ministers and royal family. With
the death of his father in August 1927, the
succession passed to Sisowath Monivong
(r.1927-41).
Sisowath Monivong and the
Siamese dancer sffair Still, the French had
a hard time in finessing the succession. In early
1926, Sisowath Monivong engaged among other
Cambodian danceur-concubines, the young Siamese
Nangsao Baen. Several newspapers in Bangkok
announced the impending marriage of Sisowath and
the dancer, leading to an active exchange between
the Resident Superior at Phnom Penh and, on
February 6, the Minister of France in Bangkok with
Foreign Minister Prince Traidos.
The first
article to appear on the subject was the Daily
Mail of January 16, 1926, explaining that Monivong
had requested the actrice Nang-Fai, for the
hand of his daughter Baen. This happened after the
cremation ceremonies for the departed king. The
Bangkok press further speculated that the French
had no objection to the marriage, and that Phnom
Penh had clarified that they were only engaged and
not yet married.
The Bangkok Post reported
that, in an interview, Nni Phoun, the girl's
father, had stated that his daughter had received
a royal title. But the royal affair was terminated
and the dancer returned to Bangkok. This led to a
recrudescence of Bangkok press opinion, treating
the girl as victim and how she had been abandoned
by Monivong under French pressure. Then followed a
second French intervention with Prince Traidos.
However, the tendentious articles
continued in the Daily Mail, terming the newly
crowned King of Cambodia a pantin or puppet.
According to a French account, the hidden reasons
for the press campaign, turned upon animosity
between Cambodia and Siam. Notable was the
influence of Prince Swasti, father of the King,
and proprietor of the Daily Mail. Prince Swasti,
it appears, had experienced a failure the previous
year in his project to arrange a visit by the King
of Siam to Cambodia, which he attributed to
Monivong.
Freeman, the American editor of
the paper, was thus obliged to fall in line with
the campaign. In the official French account, it
was deemed regrettable that repercussions of this
campaign exceeded the limits of Royal neighbors.
It was largely thanks to the Resident Superior
that he was able to put an end to this incident,
damaging to the sovereignty of the protectorate,
and compromising relations between Indochina and
Siam. This was all the more so, as relations had
only recently become amicable (AOM Indo/NF/48/3578
"Note AS pretendus marriage de SM le roi de
Cambodge avec une danseuse Siamoise").
Culture Wars: A protectorate under
challenge Almost from the outset of their
presence in Cambodia, France sought to unlock a
number of historical truths about the kingdom and
its history, vital if they were to run a
successful protectorate with limited resources.
Initial attempts did not meet with much progress
and it would be decades before French
understanding began to gel with the complex
reality of an ancient kingdom on the ropes.
Leclerc (1914: xi-xii), writing in 1913, claims
that King Norodom placed documents under lock and
key and forbade their scrutiny under pain of
severe sanction.
However, King Sisowath
proved more modern than his brother and
predecessor and facilitated consultation with a
view to demonstrating to the Khmer people their
grand history. Still, he felt monastic collections
held locally would provide even more information
on local events, as with the history of Kan the
rebel or on Sambok. More broadly, the French
sought to renovate Cambodian culture where they
thought it would buttress the status quo, as well
as to demarcate Cambodian national identity
vis-a-vis cultural and religious competition
arising from Bangkok. The state of the Buddhist
sangha (congregation) in Cambodia was a major
French concern in this regard and this would be
borne out by the facts.
L'Institute
Bouddhique While France virtually
emasculated Confucian tradition in Vietnam, in
Cambodia and Laos they found it expedient to
actually reinforce religious and cultural
traditions where they did not contradict broader
colonial goals. The key project in this endeavor
in Cambodia was the plan to establish an Institute
of Buddhist Studies in Phnom Penh. Joining the
ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO) in Hanoi
before arriving in Phnom Penh in 1923, the brains
behind this endeavor was Mlle Suzanne Karpeles, a
Sanskrit and Pali expert-graduate of L'Ecole des
Langues Orientales.
EFEO resources along
with the Institute of Indian Civilization of the
University of Paris would also be deployed in the
creation of the Institute in Phnom Penh with a
branch established in Vientiane. Founded on May
12, 1930, by King Sisowath Monivong, King Sisavong
Vong of Laos, Governor General Pierre Pasquier,
and then head of EFEO, George Coedes, the goal of
the Institute was to stimulate a revival of
Cambodian Buddhism otherwise seen as lacking in
doctrinal rigor and rent between two schools, one
of them playing into the hands of the Thai.
Symbolically, the Institute Bouddhique and
library was situated in Wat Ounalom (founded in
1422), touted as one of Phnom Penh's five original
monasteries, and located on the riverfront about
250 meters north of the National Museum facing the
Tonle Sap River near the Royal Palace. For her
part, Karpeles launched into a project to produce
a translation and critical edition of the Pali
canon (100 volumes, each 600 pages long). Such
would require the employment of teams of
translators, etc.
The Tripitaka
Commission, established in 1929, eventually
accomplished the task of translating the whole
body of Theravada Buddhist scriptures from Pali
into Khmer. More than that, through her scholarly
activities and promotional works, she also
disseminated works on Pali Buddhist philosophy and
Cambodian culture. According to the Dhamma
Encyclopedia, such activities, "helped the
educated class to distinguish the Dhamma from
Cambodian animistic and folk beliefs and to
diminish Thai influence, allowing the Cambodian
Sangha to emerge as a distinct and independent
body".
Having wrested both Cambodia and
Laos from control of the Bangkok court, the French
also sought to undertake what today would be
called "nation-building" exercises. For instance,
in the late 1930s, the Governor General observed
that Cambodia, properly speaking, did not have a
national anthem. It only had a royal anthem called
Nakoreach. Accordingly a new anthem dubbed
national hymn was composed at the request of the
king by Francois Perruchot, head of royal music in
Phnom Penh (AOM Indo NF 2365/269 Gouverneur
General de l'Indochine, Hanoi, a Ministre des
Colonies, Jan. 17, 1938).
Towards the end
of the protectorate, the French also created the
Commission des Moeurs et Coutumes setting up in an
office next door to the Buddhist Institute. The
moving force was another women, EFEO scholar
Eveline Poree-Maspero, with a brief to preserve
traditions and to make Khmer civilization better
known. Between 1941-45 she also held the position
of conservator of the Phnom Penh museum.
The seeds of nationalism: The Lycee
Sisowath strike More generally the rural
masses in Cambodia remained almost entirely
oblivious or resistant to communist ideas or
organization, undoubtedly owing to the ethnicity
of the messenger, Chinese or Vietnamese,
respectively. Nevertheless, in Cambodia, as across
the colonized world, the first generations to
receive an education in the language of the
colonizer stood as a cultural avant garde, not
only to fulfill the administrative needs of their
masters, as was expected, but also to redeem,
however vicariously, their people's expectations.
Notably, in an unprecedented action on May
7 1936, 168 interns or resident collegians of the
elite Lycee Sisowath refused to attend classes.
Certain returned to their natal villages, while
the majority put up in Buddhist temples or resided
with friends. A number of "externs" also joined
the boycott. Having sought the intervention of
various leading local personalities, on May 9 a
majority of students had returned to their desks.
On May 11, the situation was viewed as
back to normal. The reason given for this strike,
exclusively touching the indigenous population,
was to protest a recent decision to limit to 20
years of age the personal tax exemption for
students. But the students were already offside
with the school authorities over the earlier
imposition of stricter disciplinary measures.
Blame was also laid at the proprietor of
the La Verite newspaper, known for his grudge
against the administration and whose
anti-administration tirades reached right to the
gates of the school where the papers were sold.
The authorities viewed it as imprudent to punish
the student-strikers least they create new martyrs
to the anti-colonial cause (AOM Indo
NF/329/2656-2659, Resident Superieur au Cambodge
Cabinet, Rapport Politique, May 1936).
Reviewing the case, the Resident Superior
observed that, "the origins of the strike rests
with the susceptibility and pride of the Cambodian
students of the Lycee Sisowath who are a
privileged caste." He was correct. To wit, the
future Madam Pol Pot nee Khieu Ponnary was also an
alumni. In a separate report, as the Resident
elaborated, the single notable fact about the
Lycee Sisowath strike was that, although of purely
scholarly character, it also demonstrated a
certain political dimension which cannot be passed
over in silence. Notably, these protests emanated
from the most elevated ranks of the Cambodian
elite.
Under the barely discernible
external influences of the local press jeering
against French authority and its representatives
in Cambodia, "It appears that the loyalism
manifest earlier towards the Protectorate by the
mandarinate and the educated youth progressively
gives way to a certain dissatisfaction." As also
reported, youth in Chinese schools in Phnom Penh
were also politically active dedicating May 4 in
honor of Sun Yat-sen (ibid).
Buddhist
conflict Notwithstanding Cambodia's rich
Theravada Buddhist heritage and its royal
patronage, the sangha, or Buddhist hierarchy, was
also subject to schism. According to Osborne
(1969: 11), reflecting Cambodia's tributary
relationship with Siam, on one side, the Thammayut
(Dhammakay) sect of Buddhism also gained status in
Cambodia. Certain opinion holds that this only
transpired in 1864, while a continuing oral
tradition holds that it began during the reign of
Ang Duong (r.1841-1844, 1845-1860), the last
Cambodian king before the French protectorate, and
a monarch who strongly encouraged the growth of
Buddhism. In a word, as Osborne embroiders (1968:
3), "Buddhism, the village pagoda, and its monks
provided continuity in the Khmer state."
In November 1937, a virtually
unprecedented religious incident occurred at
Battambang involving a display of "Buddhist
indiscipline". As the Resident Superior of
Cambodia signaled the ministry of colonies, ever
since the 12th century the southern Buddhism of
the Lesser Vehicle (Theravada) was the single
faith, albeit mixed with Brahmanism and northern
Buddhism, practiced across the region down until
the last (18th) century, at least down until the
religious reforms of Ang Duong and violent
sequels. But Cambodian Buddhism came to be rent
between two schools. The minority Thammayut sect
in Cambodia ran 87 temples with 1,500 monks.
On the other hand, the Mahanikay was
represented in Cambodia by 2,500 pagodas supported
by 60,000 monks. The Thamnayut sect came to the
attention to the Protectorate, however, especially
because of its location and spiritual
subordination to Siam. In effect, it was observed,
the Thammayut sect was under the moral sway of
high religious dignitaries of a neighboring
kingdom, just as Thammayut monks residing in
Cambodia annually visited Siam to study Pali and
to consult sacred texts.
Accordingly, it
was feared that the instruction they received was
inimical to the Protectorate. In the event, it had
always been the policy of the Protectorate to stem
this emigration and to counteract the Siamese
influence by offering the best of the Siamese
monks the possibility of future religious
education in Cambodia. It was thus found necessary
to create a center of Buddhist culture to
enfranchise the Cambodian clergy against the
attractions of the religious centers in Siam.
It was this preoccupation which led to the
creation in Phnom Penh of the Royal Library, the
Pali School, and the Institute of Buddhist
Studies, charged with overseeing the translations
of all the sacred texts to permit consultation by
monks without the need to visit Bangkok. We should
note that, jealous of their intellectual
superiority and independence, the Thammayut sect
did not well receive the creation in Phnom Penh of
a center of Buddhist cultures.
It should
be said that with the creation of the
above-mentioned institutions, the Mahanikay
culture gradually increased its level to that of
the Thammayut. Generally, however, the animosity
between the two sects had rapidly abated.
The Thammayut of Phnom Penh were no longer
hostile to the Royal Library and commenced to
collaborate. The Cambodian monks no longer went to
Siam for their religious education. Conflict
between the two sects was restricted to Battambang
and Siem Reap provinces (reattached to Cambodia in
1907), still lightly under Siamese influence from
a religious perspective, an influence which
increasingly counteracted the "purely" Cambodian
religious movement such as propagated by the
religious centers in Phnom Penh (AOM Indo NF
2365/269 (Thibaudeau), Resident Sup่rieur,
Cambodge a Gouverneur General de l'Indochine,
Phnom Penh, Nov. 5, 1937).
More generally
in the religious field, the report continued, the
monarchs in Cambodia had exercised a certain lack
of restraint. The Ordinances of 1918 and 1929
called to order those who departed from the true
doctrine. It was specified that no-one could
deviate in doctrine and Buddhist discipline
without special authorization of His Majesty.
In 1929, in order to put an end to
doctrinal quarrels which threatened to upset the
tranquility of religious life, as well as to
retain the monks newly trained in Bangkok, His
Majesty set up a Religious Commission comprising
the Tripitika or three vessels, the "Buddhist
Bible," treating upon the three great principals
of the religion, the Law, the Assembly and the
Community, with the goal of translating into
ordinary language destined to serve the collection
of Buddhist precepts of Cambodian usage.
Sisowath reserved the right to verify the
work of the Commission. Both sects shared the
Tripitika but the two upheld certain traditional
differences as with clothing and the alms bowl.
The two sects argued over traditional rules,
possession of the true doctrine, and the best
fashion to practice, just as each sought to impose
his way on the other.
Generally, such
disputes were localized to particular monasteries
and did not pose a serious character until the
time when the monarch, his advisers, and his
entourage, and above all by the adversaries of the
Mahanikay of the new school, publicly administered
at Battambang a very lively discontent at its
practices. From this instant, the noise spread
that Sisowath disavowed the work of the Tripitaka
Commission and proposed to stop publication and
suppress the teaching of Pali (Ibid).
As
observed, the Cambodian monks exercised a great
influence over the mass of the population through
their sermons and pagoda ceremonies. Most led
exemplary lives but their number included a few
black sheep as well. Recently, old guards among
the Thammayut monks tracked the Mahanikay
colleagues and publicly reproached them for
usurping disciples of their seat. There were
disputes and several exchanges of blows in the
streets of Phnom Penh and even death threats.
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