In the Shadows of Utopia: The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian Nightmare

This bonus episode covers roughly two thousand years of Cambodian history in a single sitting, from the Khmer Empire through to independence from France in 1953. It is a summary of everything in Season One, for anyone who wants a refresher before the series moves into the 1950s and 60s, or a way in without starting from episode one.

Time Period Covered: Pre-history to 1955

This bonus episode is for those who would like to remind themselves of the topics covered in the first season of the podcast, or for new listeners who might want a simple overview of Cambodian history as it relates to the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge.

This is an introduction to the themes of the series as a whole, the aims of the podcast, the Khmer Empire, the conditions relating to Cambodia's modernity and the French colonial period. The growth of nationalism, the events of the Second World War and efforts toward independence, including the early stages of a Cambodian communist movement, are also revisited.

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Interview

On May 7th, 1954, a French garrison in a remote valley in northwest Vietnam surrendered to the Viet Minh after fifty-six days under siege. Dien Bien Phu ended French Indochina. It also set the terms of a peace conference in Geneva where Cambodia's communists would find they had no seat, and no allies willing to give them one.

Time Period Covered: December 1953 to July 1955

How does the First Indochina War end? What do the Geneva Accords mean for Cambodia? Who wins the 1955 Cambodian general election?

Cambodia faces Viet Minh assaults around the country as the First Indochina War comes to its climax, but the French will suffer their most stunning defeat at Dien Bien Phu. World powers will convene to find a solution to the conflict. The resulting 'peace' will marginalise the Cambodian communist movement at the expense of the Vietnamese one, and Sihanouk will create a new political movement.

Google Maps View of Dien Bien Phu

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Sources

Philip Short Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare
David Chandler The Tragedy of Cambodian History
Ben Kiernan How Pol Pot Came to Power
Milton Osbourne Sihanouk
Christopher Goscha Vietnam: A New History

In 1953, King Norodom Sihanouk launched a one-man international campaign to force France out of Cambodia, a performance one French general described as 'that of a madman, but a madman of genius'. By November 9th, it had worked.

Time Period Covered: January - December 1953

How does Cambodian Independence Day originate in November 1953? What does the First Indochina War look like in Cambodia? How does a young Pol Pot 'join the maquis'?

Almost out of the blue, the Cambodian king will claim independence for his country and end almost a century of French colonial rule. Meanwhile, the First Indochina War will bring its ruin to the Cambodian countryside, and Saloth Sar will join the communist struggle against the French in the jungles.

Sources
Philip Short Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare
David Chandler The Tragedy of Cambodian History
Milton Osborne Sihanouk
Christopher Goscha Vietnam: A New History
Ben Kiernan Viet Nam
Edward Miller The Vietnam War

In 1951, on Vietnamese initiative, the Indochinese Communist Party was dissolved and reorganised along national lines. Among its successors was a small, obscure organisation called the Khmer People's Revolutionary Party. It would eventually become the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the party of the Khmer Rouge.

Time Period Covered: 1947 - 1953

How did the First Indochina War become part of the Cold War? When did the Khmer students studying in Paris become communists? What influenced Saloth Sar to become a revolutionary?

This episode explains the way the first 'Vietnam War' began developing into something recognisably part of the Cold War. We also trace the path of the young Pol Pot as his studies in Paris come under the rising influence of communism. Cambodian politics and the return of Son Ngoc Thanh produce a change in the rule of King Sihanouk, and the early developments of what will become the Khmer Rouge's ideology begin taking shape.

Sources
Philip Short Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare
David Chandler The Tragedy of Cambodian History
Milton Osborne Sihanouk
Ben Kiernan How Pol Pot Came to Power
Edward Miller The Vietnam War

Between 2006 and 2012, Craig Etcheson worked as an investigator for the prosecution at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, the UN-backed tribunal set up to try the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge. He has been studying the regime for more than thirty years, was a founder of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, and testified at the tribunal as an expert witness.

In this conversation we discuss his book Extraordinary Justice: Law, Politics, and the Khmer Rouge Tribunals and get into some of the complexities involved in this 'experiment', as he puts it: the shortcomings of the tribunal, interference from the Cambodian government, and the status of the cases still being heard.

A conversation for anyone wondering what justice for the Cambodian genocide actually looked like, who was put on trial and who never was, and why it took three decades to happen.

In October 1949, a young scholarship student named Saloth Sar arrived in Paris. Back home, armed resistance to the returning French was gathering under the banner of the Khmer Issarak, and across the border the Viet Minh were already at war. The paths that open in these five years will lead, eventually, to the Khmer Rouge.

Time Period Covered: 1945 - 1950

What does the anti-colonial scene look like in Cambodia? Who are the Khmer Issarak, and how do nationalists and young Cambodian students relate to this movement as well as the growing war in Vietnam with the returning French?

In this episode we trace the path that Saloth Sar, the young Pol Pot, takes to Paris, as well as the very important developments in Cambodian and world history taking place at this time. Resistance to French colonialism takes the shape of the Khmer Issarak, a banner which includes many different groups and figures, some open to communist ideology and some staunch nationalists. Leaders such as Dap Chhuon, Prince Chantaraingsey, Puth Chhay and Son Ngoc Minh are discussed, as well as the circumstances around the beginning of the First Indochina War. Meanwhile, Saloth Sar is introduced to communist ideology in Paris, and a group of students including Ieng Sary, Thioun Mumm and Keng Vannsak begin organising themselves along Marxist lines.

Sources
 Philip Short Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare
David Chandler The Tragedy of Cambodian History
Milton Osborne Sihanouk
Christopher Goscha Vietnam: A New History
Ben Kiernan Viet Nam
Edward Miller The Vietnam War

On the night of March 9th, 1945, Japanese forces across Indochina moved against the French administration they had coexisted with for five years. By morning the colonial order was suspended, and Cambodia found itself (briefly, and almost by accident) independent.

Time Period Covered: 1939 – 1945

What is the Umbrella Revolt in Cambodia? How do nationalists like Son Ngoc Thanh react to the rise of Imperial Japan? And how does Norodom Sihanouk become king in 1941, at nineteen years old?

This episode is an in-depth discussion of the events in Cambodia and Vietnam once the French presence in Indochina was diminished by Imperial Japan. Cambodian nationalism becomes a genuine force within the country. Monks protest, and some join revolutionary movements. The young men and women who will eventually form the core of the Khmer Rouge witness the world transform radically in just six years. The rise of the Viet Minh, the declaration of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and the famous speech Ho Chi Minh makes to mark the occasion conclude the episode.

Sources
 Philip Short Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare
David Chandler The Tragedy of Cambodian History and A History of Cambodia
Ben Kiernan How Pol Pot Came to Power and Viet Nam
Milton Osborne Sihanouk
Ho Chi Minh Declaration of Independence
Christopher Goscha Vietnam: A New History

In April 1917, the German government put Vladimir Lenin on a train and sent him into the collapsing Russian Empire, calculating that a revolutionary might take Russia out of the war. Within five years there was a new kind of state on the map. Among the many colonised people watching from afar was a young Vietnamese man working in Paris under the name Nguyen Ai Quoc.

Time Period Covered: 1917 – 1939

How do you build a society out of the theories of Marx and Engels? Who was Lenin and why is he such an important communist figure? How did communism come to Indochina?

Beginning with Lenin's arrival in 1917, this episode is a discussion of the evolution of Marxism from theory to practice, and the new version of the doctrine this creates: Marxism-Leninism. The Russian Revolution represents the entrance of a new civilisation onto the globe, one fuelled by the energy of communism, and a young Ho Chi Minh sees in it a way for his country to be freed from colonialism. The reign of Lenin gives way to Stalin, and terror, as we expand our vocabulary of communism in order to better understand the actions of the Khmer Rouge.