NIAS Monographs – serie

Thailand remains important by virtue of its location at the centre of the Asia–Pacific region, an area playing a vital role in world affairs. And yet, although Thailand has a comparatively large population and has powerful military forces performing significant roles in state and society, the country itself is seen as having little military power; it is a minor player. Why is this?Using strategic culture as an analytical framework, this book produces a portrait of the Thai state as an accommodative actor. During the period of Western imperial dominance in Asia, Thailand `bent in the wind’ to preserve its independence by a limited trading of territory and sovereignty. This accommodative policy continues to the present day in different forms. A key feature is that military organisational culture reinforces a state ideology of royalist nationalism that in turn reinforces the national strategic culture.Significant here is internal political acceptance of not just military domination in civil–military relations but also of the Thai military’s limitations in state-on-state combat. The author finds such `underbalancing’ – not responding to threat, or responding to it inadequately – elsewhere in Southeast Asia, too, especially in Indonesia. Although ASEAN’s two largest economies, and despite the challenges presented by a rising China, neither country is acting to significantly build alliances or rapidly strengthen their military forces. Pointing as well to other Southeast Asian nations with weak civil control of their militaries, including Myanmar, the Philippines and Cambodia, the book sets out a case that the interplay of civil–military relations and militaryorganisational culture retards the development of strong external defence postures.

This book examines the role of community, market and state in the historic transformation of upland livelihoods in Southeast Asia.Focusing on the Saribas Iban of Sarawak, the book combines in-depth, generation-long village case studies with an account of changes in land use and tenure at the regional level spanning a century and a half.This analysis demonstrates that, far from being passive victims of globalization, the Iban have been active agents in their own transformation, engaging with both market and state while retaining community values and governance.The book offers a fascinating, empirically rich account of interest to scholars, development practitioners and the general reader alike.

The existence of Laos today is taken for granted. But the crystallization of a Lao national idea and ultimate independence for the country was a long and uncertain process.This book examines the process through which Laos came into existence under French colonial rule through to the end of World War II. Rather than assuming that the Laos we see today was an historical given, the book looks at how Laos's position at the intersection of two conflicting spatial layouts of 'Thailand' and 'Indochina' made its national form a particularly contested process.This, however, is not an analysis of nation-building from the perspective of administrative and political structures. Rather, the book charts the emergence of a notion of a specifically Lao cultural identity that served to buttress Laos as a separate 'Lao space', both in relation to Siam/Thailand and within French Indochina.Based on an impressive variety of primary sources, many of them never before used in studies of Lao nationalism, this book makes a significant contribution to Lao historical studies and to the study of nation-building in Southeast Asia.

Due to the inhospitable climate and vastness of the native population, European settlement of India was never seriously considered apart from in selected upland areas with cooler climates and sparse native populations. One such area was the Nilgiri Hills of South India which, from the early 19th century, saw concerted efforts at European colonization and displacement of the local population as well as an attempt to visualize and recreate an English landscape in the area.Other Landscapes investigates the interfaces between indigenes, European settlers and the colonial state on the Nilgiri Hills, focusing on land disputes, regulation of land sales, regimes of forest management and ethnographic projects of cultural "preservation". It examines the landscape as it was configured in the Imperial imagination, explores the corruption and manipulation of local administration and argues that rarely, if ever, did official intent correspond to the systems of reform, regulation and invigilation imposed over the local agrarian landscape.

Examining the powerful linkages between class, consumption, market relations, Islam and the state in contemporary Malaysia, this is the first book to explore how Malaysia's emerging Malay middle class is constituted through consumer practices and Islamic revivalism. By exploring consumption practices in urban Malaysia, Proper Islamic Consumption shows how diverse forms of Malay middle-class consumption (of food, clothing and cars, for example) are understood, practised and contested as a particular mode of modern Islamic practice. It illustrates ways in which the issue of 'proper Islamic consumption' for consumers, the marketplace and the state in contemporary Malaysia evokes a whole range of contradictory Islamic visions, lifestyles and debates articulating what Islam is or ought to be.

This book tells the story of Burma's financial system - of its banks, moneylenders and 'microfinanciers' - from colonial times to the present day. It argues that Burma's financial system matters, and that the careful study of this system can tell us something more general about Burma - not least about how the richest country in Southeast Asia at the dawn of the twentieth century, became the poorest at the dawn of the twenty-first. While financial systems and institutions matter in all countries,Turnell argues that they especially count in Burma as events in the financial and monetary sphere have been unusually, spectacularly, prominent in Burma's turbulent modern history. The story of Burma's financial system and its players is one that has shaped the country. It is a dramatic story of interest beyond the confines of economics and development studies.

A staple of post-war academic writing, "nationalism" is a contentious and often unanalyzed abstraction that has come to be treated as something "imagined", "fashioned", and "disseminated".Between Frontiers restores the nation to the social field from which it has been abstracted by looking at how the emergence of national space shapes the existence of people living in border zones, where they live between nations.Based on the fieldwork in, and archival research on, the borderland between Malaysian Sarawak and Indonesian Borneo, this book explores what happens when the state actualizes its territoriality. How does the state maintain national space, and how do people strategically situate themselves as members of a local community, nation, and ethnic group in a social field designated as national territory?By posing such questions in the context of concrete circumstances where a village boundary coincides with a national border, this study delineates state-society dialectics and the production of the nation viewed from the margins both as history and process.

At face value, this book is about medicine in Cambodia over the last hundred years. At the same time, however, by using 'medicine' (in the sense of ideas, practices and institutions relating to health and illness) as a prism through which to view colonial and post-colonial Cambodian society more generally, it offers an historical and contemporary anthropology of the nation of Cambodia.Rich in ethnographic detail derived from both contemporary anthropological fieldwork and colonial archival material, the study is an account of the simultaneous presence in Cambodia of two medical traditions: the modern, biomedical one first introduced by the French colonial power at the turn of the twentieth century, and the indigenous Khmer health cosmology. In their reliance on one or the other of the two traditions, to a large extent the Khmer people have been concerned to find efficient medical treatment that also adheres to social norms (not least the emphasis on the morality of social relations). This concern is also evident in the prevailing medical pluralism in Cambodia today. The authors trace the interaction (and lack thereof) between these two traditions from the French colonial period via the political upheavals of the 1970s through to the present day.The result is more than a medical anthropology; this is a key text that also makes a significant contribution to the anthropological study of Cambodian society at large and will be an important resource for development planners and aid workers in medical and related fields.

This volume examines the changing relations between China and Burma/Myanmar since Burmese independence in 1948 and the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Drawing on hitherto unavailable Chinese sources, it documents the negotiations and settlement of outstanding issues such as the border demarcation, the Chinese Nationalist forces in Burma, the status of the overseas Chinese residents, and the Burma Communist Party.The study documents the Sino-Burmese riots of 1967, the improvement of relations, culminating in the close bilateral association since 1988-89. It analyses in detail Myanmar's changing role in Chinese strategy, concentrating on trade and investment relations, oil, gas, hydroelectric power, natural resources and improved transportation. It outlines military cooperation, narcotics control, and migration while emphasizing Indian and ASEAN concerns and responses.The volume outlines a set of policy dilemmas facing the central and provincial Chinese authorities, the Myanmar government and Burmese ethnic minorities, while analysing dilemmas for the United States, India, ASEAN and Japan in responding to the changed interdependent Sino-Burmese relationship.

The focus of Chinese literary studies has long been on the written word even though Chinese fiction and drama have strong oral roots and have been shaped by an interplay between oral and written traditions.The culmination of decades working on this issue - and using as its lens the story about how the legendary hero Wu Song killed a tiger with his bare hands - this volume explores Chinese oral professional storytelling and its relations with literary culture in the past and present.

The focus of Chinese literary studies has long been on the written word even though Chinese fiction and drama have strong oral roots and have been shaped by an interplay between oral and written traditions.The culmination of decades working on this issue - and using as its lens the story about how the legendary hero Wu Song killed a tiger with his bare hands - this volume explores Chinese oral professional storytelling and its relations with literary culture in the past and present.

This volume examines the careers and intellectual positions of three prominent Japanese "dissidents" in the later Imperial period - Minobe Tatsukichi, Sakai Toshihiko and Saito Takao - as individual responses to the new forms of authority that appeared after the Meiji Restoration of 1868.The principles to which each adhered - the rule of law, socialist egalitarianism, and representative government - contributed to the new ideas about authority and the individual in post-Restoration Japan. They also remain fundamental (at least in theory) in today's Japanese polity and society. The study reaffirms the serious limitations of the pre-war Japanese political system, its structural and institutional problems, and deep-rooted ambivalence about democratic change. But it also confirms the birth of an alternative tradition in which individuals began to define and sponsor the processes of national self-regulation.The book traces the perspectives of three such individuals who chose to contest the new power arrangements through their writings and political activities.

When John Becker's Pattern and Loom was posthumously published in 1987, the work was hailed as an important work that revealed much new knowledge on the development of weaving techniques across the centuries from China through to Europe.The key to the book's almost forensic investigation of its subject was the author himself, a Danish damask weaver with a lifetime's practical experience in his craft and an intimate knowledge of weaving techniques that allowed him to decipher, experiment and interpret original techniques from small remnants of surviving material. Long out of print, the work has been tidied and reset by Becker's collaborator on the original work, the sinologist Don Wagner.

When France laid claim to the territories that became French Indochina, its beleaguered trading posts on the east coast of India gained a new purpose, sending Indians to help secure and administer its newest possessions and to assist in their commercial expansion. The migrants were among those peoples of France's overseas empire who gained the rights of French citizens following the French Revolution.This volume explores the consequences of their arrival in Indochina just as France was testing a new approach to its colonised peoples, an approach less enamoured with the idea of colonial citizenship and more racially ordered. This book offers an analysis of the fate of Republican ideals as they travelled between different parts of the French Empire and raised contentious issues of citizenship which engaged Indians, French authorities, and Vietnamese reformers in debate. It considers too the distinctive French colonial social order that was shaped in the process.A lively story, it is at the same time an important addition to scholarship on the French empire, on colonial society in Vietnam specifically, and on migration to Southeast Asia.

The Bodo (or Boros) are one of the indigenous tribal peoples of Assam. During colonial times they resisted Christianization and in recent decades they have been involved both in interethnic violence and separatist insurgencies.Much research has gone into understanding the Boros and their aspirations but an issue has been that earlier accounts of this once-animist people are meagre and date from the colonial period. The rediscovery and publication of the ethnographic material based on fieldwork carried out by Halfdan Siiger among the Boros in 1949-50 is thus hugely important. Siiger's manuscript is unique, offering detailed descriptions of the social and ritual life of the Boros and new insights into the traditions and myths as they were told in the village he studied before the transformation of religious life in recent decades.Thanks to Siiger's diligent translation and interpretation, the manuscript also preserves a number of ritual formulas and songs in the Boro language. Siiger's manuscript is given even greater relevance by the inclusion of more recent material contributed by the editors and other contemporary scholars. In addition, his original photos are augmented by new photos from the village and by rare images from the collections of the National Museum of Denmark.

One of the first conflicts of the Cold War, the Malayan Emergency was a guerrilla war fought between Commonwealth armed forces and communist insurgents in Malaya from 1948 to 1960.Souchou Yao tells its story in a series of penetrating and illuminating essays that range across a vast canvas. Throughout the book runs a passionate concern for the lives and struggles of ordinary men and women in colonial Malaya. Here, the effect of counterinsurgency measures are captured by the anthropologist’s art of ethnography and cultural analysis.Among the vignettes are an ethnographic encounter with a woman ex-guerrilla, and the author’s remembrance of his insurgent-cousin killed in a police ambush. As such, this fascinating study examines the Emergency afresh, and in the process brings into focus issues not normally covered in other accounts: nostalgia and failed revolution, socialist fantasy and ethnic relations, and the moral costs of modern counterinsurgency.

Today, the Philippines has become one of the largest exporters of medical workers in the world, with nursing in particular offering many the hope of a lucrative and stable career abroad.This timely volume narrates their stories in a multi-sited ethnography that follows aspiring migrants from Manila’s vibrant nursing schools to a different reality in Singapore’s multicultural hospitals and nursing homes, and back home to a Filipino village. In so doing, the book offers anthropological insights on the lives and expectations of Filipino medical workers who care for strangers in another Asian city and the everyday encounters, anxieties and boundaries they face.It locates their stories within wider debates on migration, labour, care, gender and citizenship, while contributing a new and distinctive perspective to the scholarship on labour migration in Asia.

In contrast to many recent works on Muslim societies, which point to an increasing ‘de-culturalization’ and ‘purification’ of Islamic practices, this engaging study probes deeply into the nexus between religion and ethnicity. By exploring architectural designs, preaching activities, cultural celebrations, social participation and everyday practices, this book explores the formation and contestation of Chinese Muslim cultural identities in today’s Indonesia. Here, for instance, it scrutinizes Chinese Muslim leaders who strategically promote their unique identities by rearticulating their histories and cultivating ties with Muslims in China. Yet, their intentional mixing of Chineseness and Islam does not reflect all aspects of the multi-layered and multifaceted identities of ordinary Chinese Muslims - there is no single ‘Chinese way of being Muslim’ in Indonesia. Moreover, asserting Chinese identity and Islamic religiosity need not imply racial segregation and religious exclusion; it can act against them. The study thus helps us to understand better the cultural politics of Muslim and Chinese identities in Indonesia, giving insights into current possibilities and limitations of ethnic and religious cosmopolitanism. In so doing, Chinese Ways of Being Muslim offers unique insights into the cultural politics of Muslim and Chinese identity in Southeast Asia today.

Indonesian art entered the global contemporary art world of independent curators, art fairs and biennales in the 1990s. By the mid-2000s, Indonesian works were well-established on the Asian secondary art market, achieving record-breaking prices at auction houses in Singapore and Hong Kong.This comprehensive overview introduces Indonesian contemporary art in a fresh and stimulating manner, demonstrating how contemporary art breaks from colonial and post-colonial power structures, and grapples with issues of identity and nation-building in Indonesia. Across different media, in performance and installation, it amalgamates ethnic, cultural and religious references in its visuals, and confidently brings together the traditional (batik, woodcut, dance, Javanese shadow puppet theatre) with the contemporary (comics and manga, graffiti, advertising, pop culture).Spielmann's Contemporary Indonesian Art surveys the key artists, curators, institutions and collectors in the local art scene, and looks at the significance of Indonesian art in the Asian context. Through this book, originally published in German, Spielmann stakes a claim for global relevance of Indonesian art.

Offering important new understandings of the Indonesian independence struggle, this fine-grained study explores the international activities in the capitals of interwar Europe of the Perhimpoenan Indonesia (PI), an Indonesian nationalist student organisation based in the Netherlands. Operating in a vibrant political environment, the PI interacted with different anticolonial movements in cities across Europe. Focusing on the period between 1917 and 1931, the book follows the personal journeys of different students to cities such as Zurich, Paris, Brussels and Berlin as they established contacts, joined associations and attended international conferences. Here, the complex reality of movement building is examined, going beyond superficial suggestions of contact and collaboration. The study shows that the activities of the PI reverberated in the Indonesian political landscape, where the new collaborations in Europe were followed with great interest. In this way, the book offers new findings for multiple audiences - Indonesianists and scholars of anticolonial resistance alike. However, it also demonstrates that the political awakening of Indonesian elites should be understood not just as an indigenous response to Dutch rule but also as part of global anticolonial movements and struggles.

Decades of war, social upheaval and political change have not lessened the enduring interest of the people of East Timor (Timor-Leste) in their oral traditions, something they share with their neighbors in the eastern islands of Indonesia. Although oral literature continues to occupy a central place in Timorese cultures, new forms of expression are emerging (for instance via published fiction and in social media). Nonetheless, the corpus of Timorese oral narrative largely retains an underlying metaphysical unity. Among others, it continues to express indigenous notions about gender and precedence - two important sociocultural markers that are among the most prominent topics currently under discussion by scholars of the region today. What has yet to be done, however, is to bring Timorese oral narratives into mainstream social science scholarship by subjecting them to a rigorous scholarly analysis. That is the purpose of this masterly study by the veteran Timor scholar, David Hicks. Drawing upon more than a half century of fieldwork and publishing, he discusses the tropes found in and illuminating Timorese metaphysical thought and literature. No other work has discussed these tropes before nor indeed attempted to discern patterns of thought in Timorese narratives. Certainly, the study will be of interest to scholars of literature, social science, structural analysis, Indonesian cultures and philosophy, as well as to those interested in the country's colonial past and in efforts to conserve its natural environment. The book should also appeal to educated citizens of Timor-Leste; here is a work illuminating how future aspirations might be grounded in a common heritage.

Thai politics have been intensely polarized since demonstrations against the government of then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra began in 2005. Conservatives aligned with the military and monarchy are pitted against critics of the establishment supporting a more open political order. In the election of 24 March 2019, this pattern was broken by the emergence of Future Forward, an upstart political party led by 40-year-old autoparts tycoon Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit. Although only founded a year before, and with minimal local roots, the party won 81 seats and became the third largest party in parliament. Future Forward was a rare attempt to break the flawed mold of Thai politics. Borrowing elements from such 'antiparties' as Spain's Podemos and Italy's Five Star Movement, the party used internet technologies to promote its leaders, Thanathorn and his leadership team gaining a celebrity status. It also appealed directly to voters with a national platform, rather than relying on local efforts to mobilize voters. Since the election, the party has been dissolved and its leaders banned from politics. Thanathorn and his colleagues represented an existential threat to the Thai establishment - at least in the imaginations of the elite. Their ability to capture the zeitgeist and tap into the aspirations of digital natives and millennials feeling little loyalty to older notions of Thai identity posed an immense challenge to the powers-that-be. Despite the demise of Future Forward, a significant shift in Thai politics signaled by the party's success seems to be in motion. This is the first book to examine the most interesting new force to emerge in Thai politics for two decades, one also exploring the wider dynamics of political leadership, party formation and voter behavior in a society where popular participation has been largely suppressed since the 2014 military coup. Based on exclusive interviews with party leaders and a wide range of Thai-language sources, it examines how Future Forward succeeded in mobilizing so much electoral support, whilst also arousing intense hostility from the conservative forces demanding its dissolution. Organized into three main themes - Leaders, Party, and Voters - this is a must-read study of Thai politics.

How can we conceive of kinship and sociality in the rapidly transforming uplands of mainland Southeast Asia? How to write about kinship in a way that neither falls into the trap of taking for granted kinship phenomena nor ignores the body of knowledge from earlier research?This in-depth study uses its rich findings from extensive fieldwork among the Khmu, upland dwellers of northern Laos, to bridge the divide between classical ethnography and modern approaches to kinship studies. Here, the author offers a fresh perspective on kinship by, first of all, stepping backwards and delving into how it is actually lived locally in northern Laos. She highlights that not only the beginning of life but also its ending deserves our attention when considering the relevance of kinship. Indeed, to a considerable extent, living kinship is about death.The context of kinship and sociality among the Khmu is significant here, these being framed by ties of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage and patrilineal descent - concepts on which this study casts new light. Dr Stolz explores this complexity in an absorbing series of intimate and self-reflective accounts. These touch upon a variety a topics, beginning with the language of kinship, then proceeding to examine the house, the changing importance of kinship throughout the life cycle, the key roles that gifting and commensality play, the meaning of work and, finally, to offer glimpses of the intricacies of village sociality and its cosmological dimensions.The underlying approach here is asking how the nature and praxis of kinship bring us closer to understanding what it means to live kinship - not just in upland northern Laos but in other societies as well. This is a significant study, one of long-term significance.

How can we conceive of kinship and sociality in the rapidly transforming uplands of mainland Southeast Asia? How to write about kinship in a way that neither falls into the trap of taking for granted kinship phenomena nor ignores the body of knowledge from earlier research? This in-depth study uses its rich findings from extensive fieldwork among the Khmu, upland dwellers of northern Laos, to bridge the divide between classical ethnography and modern approaches to kinship studies.Here, the author offers a fresh perspective on kinship by, first of all, stepping backwards and delving into how it is actually lived locally in northern Laos. She highlights that not only the beginning of life but also its ending deserves our attention when considering the relevance of kinship. Indeed, to a considerable extent, living kinship is about death. The context of kinship and sociality among the Khmu is significant here, these being framed by ties of matrilateral cross-cousin marriage and patrilineal descent - concepts on which this study casts new light.Dr Stolz explores this complexity in an absorbing series of intimate and self-reflective accounts. These touch upon a variety a topics, beginning with the language of kinship, then proceeding to examine the house, the changing importance of kinship throughout the life cycle, the key roles that gifting and commensality play, the meaning of work and, finally, to offer glimpses of the intricacies of village sociality and its cosmological dimensions. The underlying approach here is asking how the nature and praxis of kinship bring us closer to understanding what it means to live kinship - not just in upland northern Laos but in other societies as well. This is a significant study, one of long-term significance.

What does childhood mean in contemporary Thailand? What constitutes childhood in a slum? How does childhood figure in the construction of national citizenships? Rich in ethnographic detail, this fascinating, engaging and illuminating study explores the daily lives, constraints, and social worlds of children born in the slums of Bangkok, and their ways of defining themselves in relation to a range of governing technologies, state and non-state actors, and broad cultural politics. It does so by interrogating the layered meanings of “childhood” in slums, schools, Buddhist temples, Christian NGOs, state and international aid organisations, as well as social media. Giuseppe Bolotta’s analysis employs “childhood” as a prism to make sense of broader socio-political, religious, and economic transformations in Thai society. By examining the competition between different Thai and foreign actors to define and control the world-view formed by these children, he demonstrates how Bangkok slums are political arenas within which local, national and global social forces and interests converge and clash. At the same time, this analysis highlights the roles played by Bangkok’s poor children in processes of social change, considering how young people’s efforts to make sense of themselves in an era of authoritarian rule reflect the broader tensions facing the urban poor in this complex moment of Thai history. The book shows how “marginal childhoods” and the “cultural technologies of childhood” – schools, religious agencies, NGOs – reflect both endemic inequalities in Thailand’s larger socio-political structure and global transformations in transnational childhood governance. Marginalized young people’s increasingly plural cultural references create space for both existential fragmentation and creative self-reformulation, which provide socially disadvantaged citizens with unexpected religious, economic, and political resources to challenge Thai society’s generational structures of power. Through these arguments, Belittled Citizens demonstrates that “childhood” is best understood in Thailand as a political category that has been fundamental to the military state’s rule and, potentially, its undoing. It also shows more broadly how attention to children, typically excluded from national politics and therefore invisible in most political analyses, has important potential for producing startling insights into contemporary Southeast Asian societies

What does childhood mean in contemporary Thailand? What constitutes childhood in a slum? How does childhood figure in the construction of national citizenships?Rich in ethnographic detail, this fascinating, engaging and illuminating study explores the daily lives, constraints, and social worlds of children born in the slums of Bangkok, and their ways of defining themselves in relation to a range of governing technologies, state and non-state actors, and broad cultural politics. It does so by interrogating the layered meanings of "childhood" in slums, schools, Buddhist temples, Christian NGOs, state and international aid organisations, as well as social media. Giuseppe Bolotta's analysis employs "childhood" as a prism to make sense of broader socio-political, religious, and economic transformations in Thai society. By examining the competition between different Thai and foreign actors to define and control the world-view formed by these children, he demonstrates how Bangkok slums are political arenas within which local, national and global social forces and interests converge and clash. At the same time, this analysis highlights the roles played by Bangkok's poor children in processes of social change, considering how young people's efforts to make sense of themselves in an era of authoritarian rule reflect the broader tensions facing the urban poor in this complex moment of Thai history. The book shows how "marginal childhoods" and the "cultural technologies of childhood" schools, religious agencies, NGOs reflect both endemic inequalities in Thailand's larger socio-political structure and global transformations in transnational childhood governance. Marginalized young people's increasingly plural cultural references create space for both existential fragmentation and creative self-reformulation, which provide socially disadvantaged citizens with unexpected religious, economic, and political resources to challenge Thai society's generational structures of power. Through these arguments, Belittled Citizens demonstrates that "childhood" is best understood in Thailand as a political category that has been fundamental to the military state's rule and, potentially, its undoing. It also shows more broadly how attention to children, typically excluded from national politics and therefore invisible in most political analyses, has important potential for producing startling insights into contemporary Southeast Asian societies.

Focusing on the nexus between religion, the nation, citizenship and political identity, this first comprehensive ethnographic study of the Salafi Islamic movement in Indonesia explores the role of Islamic activism amongst Indonesian youth and how it has transformed the country's religious and political discourse.

The Khmer Rouge rise to power in 1975 gave birth to a terrifying new order. By 1979, when Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, up to two million people had fallen victim to executions or to starvation and diseases arising from a program of forced ruralization and total collectivization. That few accounts of the Khmer Rouge have much positive to say is no surprise. The appearance of the memoir of Phi Phuon, Pol Pot’s aide-de-camp/bodyguard, is in many ways a startling development. Though playing a relatively minor role, Phi Phuon witnessed much Khmer Rouge history. No victim’s lament, this quite candid account describes how an enterprising and idealistic young man was drawn to the revolutionary cause. It also portrays much of the Khmer Rouge leadership as patriotic, disinterested and even charismatic human beings – completely opposite to the standard view. Moreover, Phi Phuon was Jarai, from one of the despised Montagnard hill tribes on the border with Vietnam. Here, astride the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the jungles of Ratanakiri Province, is where Pol Pot and his urban, intellectual comrades took shelter and developed their military strength as war in Vietnam raged nearby. Inspired by idealized perceptions of hill-tribe lifestyles, they also developed the thinking behind implementation of a civilizational tabula rasa (blank slate) when they came to power. No academic study before has fully explored how, in their infancy, Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces almost exclusively comprised troops recruited from the tribal minorities (essentially Jarai and Tapuon) and led by (Khmer) revolutionary Marxist intellectuals from the plains. Pol Pot’s success in mobilizing the ethnic minorities, building on their century-old frustrations, is a key part of this account. Moreover, Phi Phuon sheds light on events and people not fully revealed before. Nowhere else can be found more detailed descriptions of Sihanouk during his secret visit to the maquis in 1973, or to Sihanoukville-Kompong Som in 1978, or Pol Pot’s visit to China shortly after Mao’s death in 1976. This memoir – compiled and translated by Henri Locard together with an introduction, annotations, and background history and analysis – is, then, a significant contribution to the study of recent Cambodian history.

The Khmer Rouge rise to power in 1975 gave birth to a terrifying new order. By 1979, when Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia, up to two million people had fallen victim to executions or to starvation and diseases arising from a program of forced ruralization and total collectivization. That few accounts of the Khmer Rouge have much positive to say is no surprise. The appearance of the memoir of Phi Phuon, Pol Pot’s aide-de-camp/bodyguard, is in many ways a startling development. Though playing a relatively minor role, Phi Phuon witnessed much Khmer Rouge history. No victim’s lament, this quite candid account describes how an enterprising and idealistic young man was drawn to the revolutionary cause. It also portrays much of the Khmer Rouge leadership as patriotic, disinterested and even charismatic human beings – completely opposite to the standard view. Moreover, Phi Phuon was Jarai, from one of the despised Montagnard hill tribes on the border with Vietnam. Here, astride the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the jungles of Ratanakiri Province, is where Pol Pot and his urban, intellectual comrades took shelter and developed their military strength as war in Vietnam raged nearby. Inspired by idealized perceptions of hill-tribe lifestyles, they also developed the thinking behind implementation of a civilizational tabula rasa (blank slate) when they came to power. No academic study before has fully explored how, in their infancy, Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces almost exclusively comprised troops recruited from the tribal minorities (essentially Jarai and Tapuon) and led by (Khmer) revolutionary Marxist intellectuals from the plains. Pol Pot’s success in mobilizing the ethnic minorities, building on their century-old frustrations, is a key part of this account. Moreover, Phi Phuon sheds light on events and people not fully revealed before. Nowhere else can be found more detailed descriptions of Sihanouk during his secret visit to the maquis in 1973, or to Sihanoukville-Kompong Som in 1978, or Pol Pot’s visit to China shortly after Mao’s death in 1976. This memoir – compiled and translated by Henri Locard together with an introduction, annotations, and background history and analysis – is, then, a significant contribution to the study of recent Cambodian history.