REGIONAL GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCE ON TWO KHMER POLITIES

The crisis that put the Khmer nation most recently at risk was the regime of Democratic Kampuchea. It has been estimated that within only forty-four months the leaders of Democratic Kampuchea caused the deaths of between 9 and 20 percent of the Cambodian population.53 Cambodia has still not recovered socially, economically, or politically from the trauma inflicted by Democratic Kampuchea. The area of Cambodia subjected to the most brutality during the DK regime was its southeastern provinces, especially those bordering Vietnam, an historical enemy of the Khmer. In the minds of DK leaders, the past use of the plains of southeastern Cambodia as an invasion route by foreign aggressors required that the region be purified of anyone disloyal to the Khmer nation or unsupportive of the DK's authority over it. The DK leadership's preoccupation with defending southeastern Cambodia from supposed enemies led to precisely what it feared most - an invasion by the Vietnamese on December 25, 1978. The government of Democratic Kampuchea fell within days and Vietnam occupied Cambodia for over a decade.

In the years after Democratic Kampuchea had fallen to Vietnam, Cambodia's southeastern lowlands remained important in definitions of the Khmer national interest. For example, following elections sponsored by the United Nations in 1993, Prince Norodom Chakrapong, a son of Cambodia's king Norodom Sihanouk, declared that an "autonomous region" would be formed out of provinces adjacent to the Mekong River, such as Svay Rieng, Kompong Cham, Prey Veng, Kratie, Stung Treng. Chakrapong's statement was intended to force the winning party in the election, led by a rival son of the king, to accept a coalition government with the political party that had ruled Cambodia before the election. The ploy worked - faced with the potential secession of much of southeastern Cambodia and not wanting to be regarded as responsible for a division of the Khmer people into two states, the winning party agreed to share power. In the era of global ization when national territories and borders are supposedly becoming increasingly irrelevant, the geography of Cambodia remains important in Khmer politics.

NOTES

1. John V. Dennis, Jr. "Kampuchea's Ecology and Resource Base: Natural Limitations on Food Production Strategies." The Cambodian Agony. David A. Ablin and Marlowe Hood, (eds.). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1987. p. 219.

2. Kenneth R. Hall. Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1985. p. 38

3. Ibid, p. 59.

4. Paul Pelliot. "Le Fou-nan." BEFEO 3, 1903. pp. 248-303.

5. Charles Holcombe. "Trade Buddhism: Maritime trade, immigration, and the Buddhist landfall in early Japan," p. 280.

6. Rudiger Gaudes. "Kaundinya, Preah Thong, and the 'Nagi Soma': Some Aspects of a Cambodian Legend," p. 339; George Coedes. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, pp. 36-38; and R.C. Majumdar. Kambuja-Desa or An Ancient Cambodian Colony in Cambodia, pp. 17-18.