Origins

The Cambodians/Khmer are a people from southeast Asia whose recent presence in Canada is directly related to the “Cambodian holocaust” of 1975–79. During those years, perhaps as many as two million people died as a result of the policies of the Marxist Khmer Rouge government of Cambodia. Among the survivors were 300,000 refugees who managed to flee their homeland and eventually resettle in several Western countries, including Canada.

Both the people and their country are known by several different names. Cambodia covers just over 181,000 square kilometres consisting largely of a lowland plain drained by the Mekong River and its tributaries. It is bordered in the north by Thailand and Laos, in the east by Vietnam, and in the south it has a short coastline along the Gulf of Thailand that is largely cut off from the interior of the country by several mountain ranges. In 1970 Cambodia became the Khmer Republic; then in 1975 it was renamed Kampuchea. Since 1989 the country is again known as Cambodia. The term Cambodian refers to all citizens of Cambodia, regardless of their ethnic background.

The term Khmer is the self-designation of the dominant ethnic group and language that accounts for about 90 percent of Cambodia’s 8.5 million inhabitants (1992). The ethnic minorities, who include Vietnamese, Chinese, Mnong, and Cham (Khmer Islam), among others, had accounted for about 15 percent of Cambodia’s population until the early 1970s, but many fled or died during subsequent political upheavals. On the other hand, there are Khmer minorities living just beyond Cambodia’s borders in Thailand (known locally as the Khmer Sarin) and in the far southern corner of Vietnam (the Kampuchea Krom). The Khmer language is one of several that, together with Vietnamese, belong to the large Austroasiatic language family. In this entry, Cambodia will generally be used to refer to the homeland, and Cambodian to the Khmer people living in Canada.

The history of Cambodia dates back to 1500 B.C.E., when the inhabitants first developed systems of rice cultivation and animal husbandry still practised today. The Khmer lifestyle developed in symmetry with the annual monsoons, which resulted in wet, hot summers followed by dry, cool winters. From the second to sixth centuries C.E., all of Cambodia together with smaller parts of southern Vietnam and Thailand was part of the Funan Empire. Noted for its trade relations with India and China, Funan was characterized by the cultural influences it received from both those countries, most especially India. The Buddhist religion, the scholarly language of Sanskrit, an Indian alphabet, judicial laws, and the Hindu concept of the monarchy were incorporated into Khmer culture and society. Cambodia’s art, classical dance, music, and formal dramatic presentations became rooted in Hindu and Buddhist legends and myths. The very name Cambodia was a European corruption of Kambuja, the Sanskrit designation for the various kingdoms in the area. Hence, the residents became known as Kampucheans, which means “the gentle race.”

Beginning in the sixth century C.E., Funan was replaced by the Khmer kingdom of Chenla, which during the ninth century evolved into the powerful Khmer Empire. Within three centuries, the Khmer Empire became a strong centralized state based in Cambodia but including as well present-day Laos, central Thailand, and parts of southern Vietnam and the Malay peninsula. Sophisticated hydraulic networks throughout Cambodia sustained a vast and dependable agricultural economy. This was the “golden age” of Cambodian history, lasting until the fifteenth century, during which the country experienced political stability and had flourishing centres of religious learning and the arts. The great temple city of Angkor Wat was built during this period, and it remains to this day a powerful symbol of Khmer national and cultural identity.

After 1432, the Khmer Empire was reduced to the much smaller kingdom of Kambuja/Cambodia. This was the a result of further encroachments from the west by the Kingdom of Siam and from the east by Vietnam. The kings of what remained of Cambodia became dependent on Vietnam and, in particular, Siam.

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, in an attempt to reassert its independence from Siam and Vietnam, Cambodia became a protectorate of France (1884). Three years later the country was joined with three states in Vietnam to form the new Union of French Indochina. Under French colonial rule, Cambodia’s border with Vietnam was stabilized, the French language introduced, and French administrative and educational models adopted.

The region of the Mekong Delta annexed by Vietnam included over a million Khmer, who were thereafter referred to as Kampuchea Krom. Despite the attempts of the new rulers to “vietnamize” them, the Kampuchea Krom retained a strong Khmer identity. To this day, they continue to speak the Khmer language and to identify with Cambodia.

Traditional Khmer society had three status groups or classes: royalty and government officials who lived in small towns and urban areas; rural-based peasants; and Buddhist monks. The French colonial influence furthered the dichotomy between rural and urban patterns of life, and between Khmer royalty and Khmer peasants, with the result that two distinct value systems were created. One emphasized Western ideals and education as well as “classical” Khmer culture, including an aristocratic approach to Buddhism referred to as Thommayuth. The other was entrenched in traditional rural behaviour and folkways, characterized by a conservative lifestyle and a village-based practice of Buddhism called Mohanikay.

Colonial rule also strengthened existing class divisions among minority ethnic groups and the Khmer. The Vietnamese were encouraged to assume administrative functions and vocational occupations, the Chinese to pursue financial and commercial activities, and the Khmer to remain in agricultural and intensive labour roles such as fishing, construction, carpentry, and weaving. The development of a Khmer middle-class was delayed until the country became independent.

French colonial rule was to last nearly a century and was interrupted only by the Japanese occupation during World War II. In 1953 France recognized Cambodia as an independent constitutional monarchy in which real political power was in the hands of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, head of the royalist party. During the late 1960s, Cambodia became increasingly caught up in the escalating Vietnam War. By the late 1960s, North Vietnamese Communists were moving arms and troops into the rural eastern provinces of Cambodia, and Prince Sihanouk, defying pressure from the United States, openly affiliated with Communist China. Beginning in 1969, Cambodia was subjected to American military bombing and an invasion by troops from South Vietnam directed at North Vietnamese (Vietcong) soldiers in Cambodia. In the process, over a million Khmer were forced from the rural areas into Cambodia’s capital city, Phnom Penh. In 1970 the royalist government of Prince Sihanouk was replaced by the U.S.-backed regime of Lon Nol. Cambodia, now renamed the Khmer Republic, was used increasingly as a U.S. military base for strikes against North Vietnamese troops fighting in South Vietnam.

As displaced rural Khmer continued to seek asylum in Phnom Penh, thousands of other rural Khmer joined the growing Cambodian Communist movement known as the Khmer Rouge. The country by then was in turmoil, wracked by the repercussions of the Vietnam War and an internal civil war between the U.S.-backed government and the Communist Khmer Rouge. When the Americans abandoned Cambodia two weeks before the fall of Saigon in April 1975, Khmer Rouge forces, under the leadership of Pol Pot, took over the country, renaming it Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot’s Communist Khmer Rouge regime, which lasted until 1979, was based on open force, intimidation, and the inhumane treatment of Cambodia citizens carried out in the name of Khmer nationalism and the country’s glorious past.