PHNOM PENH, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- At the bustling crossroads of Norodom Boulevard and Sihanouk Boulevard in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital, rises the brick-red Independence Monument, paying tribute to Norodom Sihanouk, the "Father of Independence" of Cambodia.
Sihanouk had an extraordinary 90-year journey replete with ups and downs.
Born into the royal family, Sihanouk personally witnessed the havoc the colonialists wrecked on his motherland, which committed him to fighting for the independence of the country. He endured a long exile after the coup and led Cambodia to achieve national independence before landing up on his home territory.
Sihanouk's life was marked by his relentless struggle for Cambodia's independence, reconciliation, development and revitalization. He played a pivotal role in awakening this ancient nation.
A "PUPPET" KING
Sihanouk's surname traces back to his great-grandfather, Norodom. Cambodia fell under colonial rule during the reign of King Norodom as Western powers expanded their grip in the region.
In 1863, French Admiral Pierre-Paul de La Grandiere arrived in the then-Cambodian capital of Udong and forced King Norodom to sign a treaty of protection. Shortly after, Chasseloup-Laubat, France's Minister of the Navy and Colonies, established Cambodia as a French protectorate, hence the establishment of Chasseloup-Laubat High School in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), the alma mater of both Sihanouk and his father, Suramarit.
King Norodom, resistant to the annexation of his country, introduced ambitious reforms aimed at overcoming the nation's stagnation and achieving self-sufficiency. Yet, these reforms were inherently unacceptable to the colonial powers.
In 1884, Charles Thomson, the French Governor-General of Cochinchina at the time, discarded the pretext of "protection" and invaded the Cambodian Royal Palace with his troops. Under duress, King Norodom was forced to cede all authority through a treaty, effectively relinquishing control of Cambodia at every level to the French.
As Sihanouk wrote in his memoirs, "King Norodom had lost all power since signing the 1884 treaty imposed on him by France … The treaty degraded King Norodom and made the Khmer king a puppet of the French authorities."
The French subjected Cambodia to extensive exploitation. Deeply troubled, King Norodom dispatched his eldest son, Norodom Yukanthor (Sihanouk's great uncle), to Paris with the aim of exposing and condemning the abuses committed by the French colonists.
As a retaliatory measure, the French issued an arrest warrant for Yukanthor, compelling him to seek refuge first in Britain and then in Siam (presently known as Thailand). He remained in exile there until his demise in Bangkok in 1934.
Cultural assimilation was typical in French colonial rule. In 1892, the French Parliament declared Indochina (today's Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) as an "assimilated" colony. In order to consolidate the dominance of French culture in Cambodia, the colonial authorities took a series of measures to restrict the development of local culture, not least by designating French as the official language, opening only a few schools across the country, hiring French teachers to teach mainly in French, and offering French history courses instead of Cambodian ones, so as to make people submissive to the colonial rule.
Under such cultural pressure, the Cambodian royal family had to bow down. When Sihanouk was a child, his mother told him that only Khmer people who were very proficient in French could find a good position in the government, so he was asked to go to the "best school with the best French teachers" at all costs. Sihanouk was sent to Phnom Penh's top primary school, where he studied French, and later to Chasseloup-Laubat High School in Saigon.
As Cambodian scholar Song Siv described the long-lasting impact of French colonial rule in his book The Civilization Movement, the practices of the French colonial rulers made many Cambodians hate their own language. Even in the Sihanouk era after independence, there were still Cambodians who hated their own language and were extremely resistant to using Khmer for communication and correspondence. This is an extension of the French colonial rule that has affected the Cambodian national language and culture.
PLUNDER OF COLONISTS
After King Norodom died in 1904, the French colonial authorities, dissatisfied with the resistance of the Norodom royal family, blocked the Norodom prince from ascending the throne. Instead, they selected Norodom's half-brother, Sisowath, who had helped crack down on two "rebellions" for the French. Sihanouk later said that since the establishment of the protectorate, it was actually the French who instructed the Supreme Council of the Throne to select the king.
After Sisowath's death in 1927, his son Monivong succeeded him. During his reign, the French opened a number of rubber plantations in Cambodia, which accounted for one-third of the total output of the French Indochina Federation. The plantations raked in huge profits for the French.
Behind the huge profits is the ruthless exploitation of rubber workers. Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, a friend of Sihanouk, visited the French rubber plantation in Kampong Cham Province and recounted the inhumane conditions: workers had to get up at 3 a.m., line up for roll call at 4 a.m., and start working at 5 a.m. until sunset. The working conditions were poor, the labor backbreaking, and mosquitoes rampant, hence numerous workers down with diseases. The French plantation owners showed little mercy, replacing dead workers with new ones and planting a rubber tree on the body of each deceased worker.
Living quarters were literally prisons, surrounded by barbed wire and armed sentries, with troops standing by in case of any emergency.
Sihanouk once believed that the colonists would change Cambodia's social structure and abolish slavery and serfdom, but he did not expect that the colonists' exploitation would be even more brutal. Under the plunder of the French colonists, Cambodia had almost no industry except for agricultural product processing and rubber production, leaving the economy backward, the people poor, and epidemics prevalent. The once-rich Cambodia became one of the poorest regions in Asia.
During World War II, France's surrender to Nazi Germany weakened its colonial grip in Asia. In 1941, the Vichy French government signed a treaty with Thailand, ceding several Cambodian provinces.
Sihanouk said that his grandfather Monivong had hoped that France would "protect" Cambodia, but it was the other way around. In April 1941, King Monivong died in his palace on Bokor Mountain in Kampot. ■