The Khmer Rouge & Pol Pot's Reign of Terror

Ben, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

My pleasure.

Tell me just briefly, in the era of mighty European empires, Cambodia, what we now know as Cambodia, is part of the, roughly speaking, French Indochina, is it? What's the nature of that

colonial rule? Yes, that's right.

Cambodia was integrated into French Indochina colonial possession in the late 19th century.

and only became independent after the Geneva Conference in 1954.

So when Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia obtained their independence.

Had they been fighting in Cambodia as they had been in Vietnam next door?

Yes, there had been.

Sporadically in the late 1940s and more intensively in the early 50s, a communist movement was founded in 1951 in Cambodia, and it fought mostly alongside the Vietnamese communists against the French until 1954.

There were also other nationalist movements fighting against the French and some Cambodians on the French side as well.

And what was the condition then of Cambodia when it achieves independence? It sounds to me like there's going to be a scramble in that vacuum left by French power.

Who's best placed to try and get control of the country?

Well, it wasn't exactly a vacuum.

Cambodia had been a kingdom for many centuries.

It goes back to the Angkor period of the medieval times.

It had been quite a powerful kingdom.

But then it had been suffering intrusions from both Thailand in the west and Vietnam in the east.

and had lost a lot of its original territory.

But it was a discrete kingdom at the time it was taken over by the French in the 19th century.

And the king of Cambodia at the time of the French withdrawal in 1954 was Norodom Sihanouk.

And he then stood down from the monarchy and became the chief of state instead.

But it was still a kingdom.

His father briefly, until his death, served as king.

And Noradom Sihanouk was now a prince, but chief of state of Cambodia in the late 50s and early 60s and until his overthrow in 1970.