Sample: Ang Mey: A Khmer Queen Considers Her Nation
CAMBODIA: Ang Mey: A Khmer Queen Considers Her Nation
A region encompassing Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia is too vast and complex to reduce to a simple moniker like “Indochina.” Southeast Asia is a dynamic cluster of nations and peoples, with more history and context-making than many Westerners can easily comprehend or fully appreciate. From ancestral Indian Vedic expansion back when Socrates walked the earth to the tumult of war and its aftershocks that created cataclysm over the second half of the 20thcentury, this geographically diverse and culturally expansive region with devotees of Chinese Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity presents a fusion of languages, religions, and customs.
To consider just one nation, The Kingdom of Cambodia, is to confront a long, rich, and resilient history. The “Kingdom of Wonder” has withstood millennia of conquest and warfare involving Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and American aggressors — as well as those from its own regional adversaries. The arrival of French Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century and the establishment of Cambodia as a French protectorate in 1863 may have brought “organization” (we will not use the term “civilization”) in education, administration, and laws (à la française, of course!) but let’s be clear: colonialism (the ancient kingdom of Cambodia was literally designated as a “colonie d'exploitation”) only further ignited a centuries-long tinderbox of political and nationalist fervor and tension. In the context of the Cold War, this resistance culminated in a cascading brutality of mid-century wars and late 20th-century mass exodus.
The “story” of Cambodia should not be reduced to just the archaeological splendor of the Angkor Wat Buddhist temple complex on the magnificent end of the spectrum, nor the agonizing heartbreak of the Khmer Rouge genocide depicted in films such as 1984’s Academy Award-winning film The Killing Fields on the other. (And is defining a 40,000-year old culture even Hollywood’s business to do?) It is a nation of natural, culinary, and cultural marvels — and one with a dogged bequest of geopolitical disputes and power plays. You can go all the way back to the 900s to see these contests chronicled. Kingdom, vassal state, friend, enemy, conquered, conquering, nearly eviscerated by genocide, and today somewhat overrun by awe-seeking tourists, this land is suffused with ancient Khmer traditions of kindness, honesty, and humility. It continues to redefine itself today. To gain just a small prism into a pivotal time in the nation’s history as well as the destiny that followed, let’s visit with Queen Ang Mey, one of the few female monarchs in the Cambodia’s (and the world’s) history. She ruled from 1835 to 1844, decades before the French colonialist era.
My full name is Samdech Preah Mahā Rājinī Ang Mey and I was born in 1815, the second daughter of King Ang Chan II. Most historians refer to me as Ang Mey. My ascent to the throne was a matter of genealogy, gender, and politics. You see, when I was 20, my father, the king, died, with no sons to succeed him. This was one of those periods of time where the Vietnamese actually exerted the control of my country, so it the succession was to be their decision.
Vietnam had already controlled your country at many points in the past, isn’t that correct?
We call it a Cambodian Kingdom, but historically we were always being wrested under either the dominance of Siam (Thailand) or Vietnam. This is what I mean when I say my ascent to the throne was an issue of genealogy and politics: when father King Ang Chan II died, it would have stood to reason that one of my uncles would have perhaps been named sovereign, such as my Uncle Ang Duong, father’s younger brother. Our controllers, the Vietnamese did not want this, because they knew Uncle Duong would resist their domination. Another choice might have been my older sister, Princess Ang Baen. But, she was a Thai sympathizer, so they would not accept her. The left me. The Vietnameses’s intent was for me to marry the son of Emperor Gia Long. But the nobles of the Khmer Royal Court raised such a ruckus over the idea that I was spared that fate.
You speak of all of this as something that just happened to you, and that you didn’t have much say in any of it.
Marriages have always been matters of political alliance, in my part of the world just as in Europe. It is interesting for historians to speculate about what might have happened to our countries if I had had to marry the Emperor. Because, you see, Gia Long (also known as Nguyễn Ánh) founded the Nguyễn Dynasty in 1802 — the last Vietnamese monarchal dynasty. I might have had a very majestic life as Vietnam’s Empress. But then, would I have entirely erased my Khmer people and their history and culture? For such a marriage would have meant Cambodia’s entire subsummation into Vietnam. I might have gone down in history as the stately Mother of the Nguyễn Dynasty, a realm of figurehead monarchs that remained intact through all of the French colonization up until Bảo Đại’s abdication in 1945. One hundred and one years after I was forced off the throne: the year the Germans surrendered in World War II, the year the Americans dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the year Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi.
And once again, here I am talking about Vietnam instead of Cambodia!
Tell me a bit about your country and culture when you reigned.
The first thing to know is that besides a short series of queens in Madagascar, the only other woman ruling over a country during my day was Queen Victoria. Now granted, she was sovereign over an entire empire, so we can’t compare, but still. My actual title was quận chúa(Vietnamese for “Commandery Princess”), though I was in fact the Queen. So both my title and my power were confusing. The Vietnamese and the Siamese were incessantly disputing who would have the most regional power, and my country was the prize they both wanted. The Kingdom was situated on the prime Mekong River commercial routes connecting the region to Laos, and we also enjoy coastal trade routes, and lush forests.
As the sovereign, I was a simply a mere pawn to the factions around me: the year before I was ascended, Preah Reacheanachak Kampuchea (our Khmer name for the Kingdom of Cambodia) had been incorporated into Vietnam in 1834 as Tây Thành province (“the “Western Commandery”) With this came a massive campaign of Vietnamization. Even as I was the sitting monarch, my people grew more nad more frustrated with Huế (the Vietnamese capital), and they lashed out against the Vietnamese power in 1840-41. I didn’t have any actual control to start or stop this, and I daresay, I was deposed and reinstated more times than I can even remember.
Seeing an opening, the Siamese King Rama III sent Thai forces to support my uncle, Ang Duong, in an effort to reclaim the Cambodian throne from Huế (the Vietnamese capital) for Siam. Meanwhile, I was exiled to Vietnam. My sister, who was conspiring with the Siamese, got caught at the onset of the war, and she was executed by the Vietnamese.
She must have been deeply committed to independence if she risked her life.
To give you a fuller understanding of my family’s plight, let me share a little bit about the Khmer spirit of defiance. Of all the countries that tried to impose themselves on our Kingdom, the Vietnamese tried hardest to erase us. But you see, we Khmer people have our own culture, our own food, music and dance, religion and customs, our own everything. Going all the way back to the roots of our nations, you must take in mind the ancient differences between Chinese Han and Confucian cultures, which the Vietnamese adopted, and our more Buddhist Cambodian traditions. Our great Anghkor Wat temple complex was built to honor our Buddhist gods, not Confucian deities. Too often, people in the West, including our future colonizers and the Americans who fought wars for or against us, have tended to conflate us into being the same cultures, the same peoples. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
As I am saying, over the many times the Vietnamese rulers tried to control Cambodia, this oppression would seek to obliterate our identity, in everything from language to names to clothing. They would force us to wear their garments instead of ours, we had to grow our hair long; the foods we liked weren’t sold at the market, we were prohibited from speaking our Khmer language. Think how unwelcome that would be for any of you today. Like many people being invaded by neighboring aggressors, we would try, again and again over the centuries, to resist these so-called attempts of being “dominated.” This was the case with the Siamese and the Vietnamese, and it was also the case with the French.
I’m understanding that, while you were installed onto the throne by the Vietnamese yourself, and many say you were complicit with them during your reign, you do not want to be remembered as a mere Vietnamese “puppet.”
Consider the time in which I lived and consider the historic reality of our ongoing struggles with Vietnam — and then add the fact of gender position. There was not much one ruler would have been able to do to shift that momentum and mindset — and certainlynot any one woman! My family members who colluded with the Siamese were all punished: my mother and uncle and others were exiled, and my sister Princess Baen, well she gave her life. I wanted to live, my friend, I wanted to live.
And even though Siam and Vietnam were fighting over the prize of Cambodia, our great Khmer Empire was already in decline. By the time of my father’s death, you could almost have described us as a failed state. Our poor peasants were barely subsisting on rice farming, and despite our enviable geographical position along the Mekong, the Silk Road economy of cotton, silk, and incense was controlled by Hué; the wealth did not trickle down to the Khmer people. While the countries around us were building their roads, irrigation systems, and other infrastructure, we were behind. By the time of my father’s realm, Vietnam was chomping at the bit, and our northwestern provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap had been annexed by Siam.
I may have been embroiled in these political complications while I was “queen,” but in the end I am a Khmer woman and I loved my culture and country. People need to know how venerable our culture has been, how during our Golden Age (from Jayavarman II, our Chakravartin (universal ruler) in 802 to the realm of Jayavarman VII (1181-1215), wewere actually the dominant party in the region. It was in the 12thcentury, under our great Suryavarman II that Angkor Wat was constructed. We peacefully and gracefully melded our Hindu ancestral traditions with Theravada Buddhism and we created great art, architecture, dance, music, and architecture. Our great original Khmer age might have fallen to the Ayutthaya Thai kingdom in 1431 CE, but our pride could never be quelled. I tell you this: such ancestral memory is why and how my people resisted domination, again and again.
Monks and some regular civilians would carry the mantle of dissent, for years and years to come, including during and after the American War. I am getting ahead of myself, for I was not here for any of that, of course. But back in my time, after I was deposed, Siam invaded my country. And so it continued: Vietnam and Siam were fighting each other, but using our lands to do so. (This trend would repeat in our history.)
How did the war finally end?
From my perspective, the war never ended. These vital enemies saw they were entrenched in a never-ending battle so they sought a compromise: I would be reinstated, but as co-sovereign with Uncle Duong. But do you know what happened? He alone was actually coronated; I was cast aside.
What a betrayal.
Oh, the politics of the succession crisis, like the politics and fakery that surrounded my life, make it difficult to easily speak to this. I can say that it all became too much for me. Was I a harlot or a heroine? Did I protect my country or sell it out? Should I even refer to myself as a “queen”? I had no actual authority, my handlers were put in place to watch and control me, my sister was murdered, I was exiled and reinstated over and over, war continually ravaged my peace-loving kingdom, my people were hungry. Being a woman, whatever I might have even wanted to do would have resulted in my being judged more harshly than a man. Would you have kept whatever wits were still about you intact?
Though I continued to live twenty years after uncle, Ang Duong was named King of Cambodia, no one paid attention to me. I was considered by history to have lost my mind, actually. I fell into oblivion quite rapidly; I married a commoner, we had two daughters. And then he and I were killed in an accident in 1874. The historical record didn’t even bother to note what killed us, and the authorities didn’t even cremate us until 1884 — ten years after the fact. That was not in keeping with our custom.
I am so very sorry, Queen Ang.
It is long past now and we are at peace. And of course, we must admit Uncle Duong did as well as he could through the end of his reign in 1860. Yes, it was a period of continual economic decline for Cambodia, but he tried to unite our people and culture. He must be given credit for protecting the Kingdom from further foreign incursion. He updated our legal code, minted coins for the first time, and personally contributed great poetry and literature to our canon. Kakey, a novel inspired by regional folklore recounting the story of an unfaithful wife, and Puthisen Neang Kong Rei, one focusing on a faithful wife willing to sacrifice her life for her husband. These titles contributed two words to our moral code and langage: kakey and neang kong rei, which loosely translate to “unfaithful” and “faithful” wife. Now honestly, I was not alive during the Feminist era, but you can see with that either-or dichotomy, a woman was not going to be able to rewrite the tide of history!
In what ways would you say colonization by the French impacted your country?
When the French came around in 1863, Uncle Ang Duong’s son Norodom Sihanouk was the King, but his power had never been recognized by the Siamese. Seeking protection from them, he turned to the French, who were more than happy to step in as they had already annexed Vietnam. The Europeans would receive broader access to the Mekong, more cheap labor, more access to China trade routes — power.
When one tells the story of colonization, one tends to imagine that the Europeans took over “savage” lands devoid of culture or history of their own, and that it is their “duty” to fill their conceptual vacuum with their own elevated culture. But of course, we were all treated poorly, Cambodia worst of all, many say. My people paid the highest taxes per capita in all of the region. In fact, the year of 1916 would witness another Khmer uprising, a tax riot. Soon after that, the global Great Depression of the 1930s. Even when our country gained its independence from France in 1953, a dark fate awaited Cambodia. Once the French were no longer “enemy number one,” old angers had the opportunity to resurface.
Yes, the Second Indochina War destabilized your country greatly.
Thank you for not referring to it as the “Vietnam War.” In my part of the world, it is called “The American War.” And, as we know, it did not just affect the country of Vietnam, would that it were so! Here is the short story of our country in the second half of the 20th century. I will tell this as dispassionately as I can, because even to the ancestors, the amount of suffering and trauma is hard to bear. (Deep sigh).
As you’ve heard, over the past centuries, we had wars over land, and religion, and power: “are you Confucian?” or “are you Hindu?”. But what happened in 20th century with the rise of the so-called Superpowers and their Cold War and nuclear arms race was beyond imagination.
Even though the Second World War weakened France and England alike, our colonizers, the French, did not wish to relinquish colonial control. This dispute erupted in the first Indochinese War, from 1946-1954. It was very violent; you know, the Vietnamese had centuries of outrageous warfare experience, and they knew our regional jungles. At the 1954 Geneva Accords. Vietnam was divided along the 17th parallel, into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. From the North, the political figure Ho Chi Minh, who had adopted Communism years earlier while living abroad, led the nationalist fervor, establishing the Viet Minh Party. With the partition, the lines were clearly drawn: the Soviets and Chinese supported the North, where Ho Chi Minh had established a successful mix of Marxism with Vietnamese nationalism.
Because the whole world was being divided into Communist or Not, the US put its support behind the South. It was a way for the United States to wage war with Russia without being in direct war, because who knows what would have happened with their fingers both on their nuclear briefcases. (Just like in my times, outside enemies were waging their battles with each other on our turf!) By the early 1960s, your President Kennedy was conducting a covert war against the North Vietnamese, but it soon broke out into an all-out conflagration. Because the Vietnamese were always calling the regional shots, their nationalist forces of the North had set up military bases in our country in their fight against the Americans. Therefore, quite naturally, the Americans were going to bomb them — us.
Our region has seen many bloody conflicts over the centuries, but with television coverage, this war and its many atrocities has had an indelible, almost mythic impact on the US. Besides parts of our country being bombed in retaliation, we were watching this war with great alarm, knowing it was only a matter of time before the entanglements of our histories would come over to us.
Your country lost the war: your President Nixon would eventually be forced to withdraw the troops. Just as France had not been able to subjugate the Vietnamese. (And yes I see I’m unable to talk about our history without making it all about Vietnam again.) So, this was an unfathomably unstable moment in our Indochinese region. In my country, you had the Communist Party of Kampuchea, growing in influence since the 1960s, and the North Vietnamese had basically won for the Communist side of their nation. The United States was trying to exert Western power in the region by controlling my country (again, we were put in a puppetry role!) On March 18, 1970, our National Assembly voted to remove King Norodom Sihanouk and replace him with a US-controlled ruler, General Lon Noi, in a bloodless (for now) coup.
Sihanouk was not pleased to be deposed, and from exile, he decided to conspire with the Khmer Rouge faction, as this was as a form of popular resistance to American and Western influence. Khmer Rouge was gaining increasing support within our rural areas, and by 1873, was the majority influential power. Since our country was so deeply destabilized by the covert US bombings against the Viet Cong, it was only a matter of time before the Khmer Rouge would detonate against the Western forces. It took merely a month after King Norodom was deposed for the the Khmer Rouge to take control of Phnom Penh and, hence, the nation. April 17, 1975. Our beautiful city, once known as the “Pearl of Asia,” was in the hands of this hateful, radical communist movement! Thirteen days later, Saigon in South Vietnam would fall to the North and Ho Chi Minh. Communism had won the lands.
Hateful, radical, communist? Didn’t some people support this anti-Western stance?
I love our ancient culture and tradition, and we already had had to defend our history against the Vietnamese (and the Siamese, today’s Thailand) when I sat on the throne. So I would never be in favor of any movement that sought to upend the great Khmer traditions. This one-party rule did not take long to show its true authoritarian face. Their goal was to entirely erase all that Cambodia had been, and to start with a so-called blank slate, a Year Zero, but one based on a type of totalitarian Communist dystopia. They sought to abolish money, to get rid of private property, and to expunge religion entirely. That was cataclysm enough, but the means they used to enforce their might: forced labor, separation of families and destruction of kinship units, persecution of intellectuals and professionals — anyone they felt was tainted by the West; remember, we had been colonized by the French and so their imprint was strong in our nation, well before the American War inserted more Westernization. Our cities were evacuated by force, and their abomination of a leader, Pol Pot, inserted extreme violence. Mass, mass killing! Preah Chea M'chas Dor L'or! (ព្រះជាម្ចាស់ដ៏ល្អ, “Good God!”). It is said that some two million Cambodians died, either from murder, starvation, disease, or exhaustion from forced labor. A quarter of our population!
How did this horrible period ever end?
Though ideologically both nations wree Communist-controlled, the Vietnamese still wanted to be the major player in the region. They wanted their Communism to prevail. Furthermore, Pol Pot was a little too much on the China side for them, and his Kampuchean Revolutionary Army was constantly invading the provinces along the Vietnamese border. So, having had enough of all that, Vietnam invaded our country once again. Ho Chi Minh’s forces marched into Cambodia in 1978 and overthrew Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge government in 1979. The new government was installed, called the People's Republic of Kampuchea. This Vietnam-supported government controlled our country for a decade.
And all the same, peace remained elusive! Guerrilla warfare continued to rage along the Thai border, with China and Thailand supporting Pol Pot. He would retreat to a spot near the Thai border, watching his party dwindle over the next two decades. Even with this diminishment, the remaining Khmer Rouge factions remained in dispute with each other. Pot ordered the murder of Son Sen, a former Khmer Rouge leader, in 1997, which led to a five-day mini-war between the factions. Pot was put on a sham trial by his party and placed under house arrest. He died on April 15, 1008, near the Cambodia-Thailand border. This terrible man was 72 years old, and while the official account said he died of heart failure, it’s generally believed he committed suicide. With his death, Khmer Rouge was finished.
This must hav been a moment of great celebration for the Khmer people of Cambodia.
Not really, because there was no autopsy and there has been no real closure nor reconciliation in our people’s hearts and spirits. And tragically, turmoil, economic distress, small-scale conflicts, and acts of violence against civilians carries on. You know the anti-Vietnamese bias in Cambodia is not just going to disappear, not after all this conflict, and all these centuries. So what we have seen is an ongoing mass exodus of people from our country to other parts of the world.
Tell me about this diaspora, can you?
Many people evacuated in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took power, then there was another big wave from 1978-79 at the height of the Genocide, and a third round, after the Vietnamese invasion of 1979. My people escaped in large numbers for the US, a sizeable number some to France, and small pockets to Australia and Canada. In recent times, latter generations have fled to Thailand, mostly for work.
It has not been easy for these refugees. In the US, it has been very hard, economically as well as culturally. As I alluded, too many Westerners think we are the same people as the Vietnamese (can you imagine how upsetting that is, after all these centuries of battle?!). In South Asia, specifically Thailand, these migrants are generally undocumented, and severely discriminated against. Not to mention the unabated trauma of our holocaust years, which many elders still hold in their memory.
We know epigenetic trauma is real; it shows up in the stories, told and untold, and in the body, and this agony gets passed on, generation to generation. There is so much pain to be addressed within our families!
Yet at the same time, people must carry on, and they try to do the best they can. Some younger generations have integrated into Western culture, which makes their lives easier on the surface, but what we hate to see is the struggle that these young people have holding on to our traditions. We do not want to see our proud Khmer culture die out. That would be the real end of the country, in a way that is heartbreaking to imagine.
There are hopeful signs. Our country is a young nation — the median age is 24 — and there is a good amount of energy and dynamism among the young people. Today, we are encouraged to see that there are many women today who are making strides in many fields and bringing pride to their ancestors, both in the diaspora and in our evolving country too. The fashion designer Phillip Lim is a star in the West, and there are some TV celebrities and rappers in the US who are proudly claiming their heritage and making it easier for other Cambodians to take pride in our cultural history. They are even indirectly uplifting the profile of other Asians. Increasingly, we see youth organizing around issues of climate, which is so essentially important.
How I hope for a bright future!
Yes, we all do. There is still a road to travel for us. Cambodia remains under one-party rule, and there are many persistent human rights violations that we would like to see addressed. While our economy has gotten stronger than after the genocidal years, there remains too much inequity and instability. On the other hand, civil society makes some progress. We are also a member of ASEAN, (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and are trying to find regional intergovernmental cooperation instead of invasion and war.
It is not easy, but we don’t wish to give up.
