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An Anti-Vietnamese Rebellion in Early Nineteenth Century Cambodia: Pre-colonial Imperialism and a Pre-Nationalist Response*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

David P. Chandler
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Extract

The “holy man's” (nak sel) rebellion against the Vietnamese that broke out in 1820 along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border is the best-documented one of its kind in pre-colonial Cambodia, and makes a useful addition to the literature of such revolts in Buddhist Southeast Asia. Its importance in Cambodian terms lies in its anti-Vietnamese character, the participation in its ranks of Buddhist monks, the collusion of Cambodian authorities, and the way in which these themes foreshadow Cambodian political thinking, before and after the arrival of the French.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 1975 , pp. 16 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1975

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References

1 For a general discussion, see Malagoda, Kitsiri, “Millenarianism in Relation to Buddhism”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, (CSSH) XII (1970), 424–441CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Bunnag, Tej, “The 1901-1902 Holy Man's Rebellion in Northeast Thailand” (in Thai), Social Science Review, V, 1 (June 1967) 78–86Google Scholar; Hill, Frances, “Millenarian Machines in South Vietnam”, CSSH, XIII, (1971) 325–350Google Scholar and Murdoch, John B., “The 1901-1902 Holy Man's Rebellion”, Journal of the Siam Society, (JSS) LXII, 1 (January 1974) 47–66Google Scholar.

2 Rioeng rabalkhsat sruk khmaer (The story of the royal lineage in Cambodia) (Phnom Penh, 1958)Google Scholar, hereafter RRSK, pp. 45-54. Two manuscripts dating from 1869-1870 and from 1874, are in the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh. The earlier one appears to be the source of the printed version. A collation of the 1874 text with RRSK reveals no substantive variations i n the section dealing with the rebellion. According to Eng Sut (comp.) Akkasar mahaboros khmaer (Documents about Cambodian heroes) (Phnom Penh, 1969) p. 1209Google Scholar, a third manuscript exists, but I have not been able to consult it.

3 Dai-nam thuc luc chinh bien (Primary compilation of the veritable records of imperial Vietnam), trans, into modern Vietnamese by Nguyen Ngoc Thinh and Dao Duy Ann, 26 vols. (Hanoi, 1962- ) hereafter DNTL, V, 125.

4 Nguyen van Sieu, Phuong Dinh Du Dia Chi (The Geographical chronicles of Phuong Dinh) trans, into modern Vietnamese by Ngo Manh Nginh (Saigon, 1959), hereafter PD, p. 192. I am grateful to John Whitmore for drawing my attention to this text.

5 For a discussion of bansavatar “families”, see Chandler, David P., Cambodia Before the French: Politics in a Tributary Kingdom, 1794-1848, Ph. D. Dissertation (University of Michigan, 1973)Google Scholar Ch. i, which rests to a large extent on Michael Vickery's unpublished analysis of the various bansavatar.

6 See Chandler, Cambodia Before the French, Chs. iii-v, and Anamwat, Thanom, Relations Between the Thai, the Khmer and the Vietnamese in the Early Bangkok Period (in Thai), M.A. thesis (Prasarmnit College of Education, Bangkok, 1971)Google Scholar.

7 DNTL, I,98, and PD, p. 188. See also Khieu, Thai van, “La Plaine aux Cerfs et la Princesse de Jade”, Bulletin de la Societe des Etudes Indochinoises (BSEI) XXXIV (1959) 378–393Google Scholar.

8 Chandler, ch. iii, and Anamwat, pp. 51 ff.

9 See Cotter, M. G., “Toward a Social History of the Vietnamese Southward Movement”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, (JSEAH) IX, 1 (March 1968) 12–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boudet, Paul, “La conquête de Cochinchine par les Nguyên et le role des emigrés chinois”, Bulletin de l'Ecole Française d'Extrême Orient, (BEFEO) XLII (1942) 115–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Gaspardone, Emile, “Deraiers regards sur l'expansion au sud”, Collège de France, Annuaire LXV (1965–1966) 392–394Google Scholar.

10 The process was called “slowly eating silkworms” according to Woodside, Alexander, Vietnam and the Chinese Model, (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 247CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 PD, p. 191. See also Aubaret, G., (trans.) Gia Dinh Thung Chi (Histoire et description de la Basse Cochinchine) (Paris, 1863), pp. 128–129Google Scholar, and Chandler, op. cit., ch. iv.

12 Until 1830; Chandler, p. 107, based on Thai archival materials in Bangkok.

13 The workers rotated in two-month shifts. For a full discussion of the canal, see Malleret, L., L'archéologie du delta de Mekong, 4 vols. (Paris, 1959–1963)Google Scholar I, 27-33. See also Tran Van Hanh, “Inscription de la montagne de Vinh Te”, BSEI, No. 48 (1904) 20-45; Aubaret, op. cit., pp. 148-149, and DNTL, VI, 179.

14 Additional Cambodians worked on the canal, at Chan's insistence, in 1822, according to DNTL, VI, 107.

15 RRSK, pp. 34-40. See also Crawfurd, John, Journal of an Embassy from the Governor General of India to the Courts of Siam and Cochinchina (London, 1830, repr, 1967)Google Scholar, Appendix, p. 578, which reports the summary execution in Saigon in 1822 of a foreman on the canal charged with corruption, and p. 587, which reports 10,000 deaths among labourers on the canal. Phong-sawadan khamen (Khmer chronicle: title in Thai, text in Khmer) in the Manuscripts Division of the Thai National Library, hereafter PK, p. 164, adds that “when the canal was dug, Vietnamese settled alongside it.”

16 The rebellion in RRSK follows the discussion of the canal.

17 PK,p. 170.

18 DNTL, V, 125. The districts were Quang Hoa, Quang Phong and Thuan Thanh, close enough to the Vinh Te Canal to have provided labourers for it.

19 These were, in descending importance, chaophraya Tei, narin Kol and nai Ke, from Preal. There are four villages of this name in modern Cambodia; one (11° 41′ N, 105° 35′ E) is near Ba Phnom.

20 Chaophraya tuan (Pho). Many Moslems, of Cham or Malay origin, enjoyed positions of trust at Chan's court. See DNTL, XV, 114, and RRSK, p. 33.

21 PK, p. 170, (Phnom Penh) de Villemereuil, p. 336, (Hue) and the Khmer text from which de Villemereuil is drawn, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, Fonds Indochinois 81 (Saigon). RRSK, p. 60 says that some were executed in Phnom Penh and others in Saigon.

22 On Chan's superstitious nature, see DNTL, XV, 232-233.

23 PK, p. 162.

24 Tay Ninh is sacred to the Cao Dai sect, founded in 1926 near Nui Ba Den (”Black Maiden Mountain”), revered by 19th century Vietnamese (Aubaret, op. cit., p. 178). See also Baudrit, A., “Correspondence de Simon de Larclause” BSEI, XIV, 3/4 (1939) 178 ffGoogle Scholar., which describes the assassination of a French official in 1866 near Tayninh by a millennial band; the site of the assassination, according to Smith, R.B., “An Introduction to Caodaism”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) XXXIII (1970), 342Google Scholar, is revered by local inhabitants. On p. 348, Smith lists several millennial sects in the region in the 1870s. On B a Phnom, see Aymonier, Etienne, Le Cambodge, 3 vols. (Paris, 1902–1904) I, 233–235Google Scholar, and note 25 below.

25 Chandler, David P., “Royally Sponsored Human Sacrifices in Nineteenth Century Cambodia: the Cult of nak ta Me Sa (Uma Mahisasuramardini) at Ba Phnom”, JSS, LXII, 2 (July 1974), 207–222Google Scholar.

26 Two Cambodian millennial leaders, Pu Kombo (1866) and Prince Siwotha (1877) also rallied followers an d declared their legitimacy at B a Phnom.

27 DNTL, VI, 76. Minh Mang rejected the request, citing Chan' s recently acquired “maturity”.

28 These came to the surface, in the DNTL at least, only after his death in 1828: See DNTL, IX, 254 and XI, 88 ff. There are echoes of Thuy's involvement in timber concessions in the 1820s in RRSK, pp. 44-45.

29 Details of this unusual proposal, and Minh Mang's ambiguous response, are in DNTL, IX, 328-329.

30 Sastra Iboek rabkhsat... ong jan (Document about the Reign of King Chan), MS. in the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh. The poem comes from the same area as RRSK, and has the same preamble.

31 RRSK, p. 1. The poet claims to be a former official in Baray (Kompong Thom province).

32 On Cambodian “non-Vietnameseness” in this period, see Aubaret, p. 129; RRSK, p. 129; and several recent Khmer historical novels, e.g. Di k Keam, Moen meas (a proper name) (Phnom Penh, 1969) and On Ram, Sontujit, khmaer nakjat niyum (Sontujit, a Khmer nationalist) (Phnom Penh, 1969). For an analysis of Cambodian-Vietnamese friction in the 1920s, see Brocheux, Pierre, “Vietnamiens et minorités en Cochinchine pendant la periode coloniale”, Modern Asian Studies, VI, 4 (1972) 443–457CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cambodians in South Vietnam revolted against the Vietnamese in Tra Vinh in 1822 (Malleret, L., “La minorité cambodgienne de Cochin-chine”, BSEI, XXI [1946–1947] 18–34Google Scholar), joined Khoi's revolt against Minh Mang in 1833-34, and with French encouragement massacred Vietnamese villagers in Vinh Binh and Ba Xugen in 1945-46. (Christine White, personal communication. )

33 There are interesting parallels her e to the arguments in Anderson, Benedict, “The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture” in Holt, Claire (ed.), Culture and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972) pp. 1–70Google Scholar.

34 Kuy may be a local hero , but it is more likely that he is drawn from oral tradition and has been confused with a Khmer of the same name whose anti-Vietnamese exploits in the 1820s in southeastern Vietnam are recounted in Malleret, Archeologie, IV, 28-29, and in Kaev Savat, Okya Kuy (proper name) (Phnom Penh, 1966): see especially pp. 88-92.

35 The official connected with the alleged corvee in RRSK is entitled yuddha. A Khmer official with this word in his title was governor of a district near Hatien in the 17th century: Leclere, A., Codes cambodgiens, 2 vols., (Paris, 1900), I, 116Google Scholar.

36 RRSK, p. 46.

37 This polyglot army in fact probably accompanied the expeditionary force already “destroyed” in RRSK; the 1869 poet makes no mention of a Vietnamese component.

38 The poet may be echoing the bansavatar accounts of floods and epidemics in 1818- PK p. 169.

39 RRSK, p. 58.

40 These included withholding salaries from corvee workers, adjusting tax assessments and village census records, alienating land, substituting Vietnamese officials for local patrons, and breaking down traditional grievance procedures.

41 In 1822, supplementing his gift to Thuy of three districts near Chaudoc, Chan spontaneously offered Minn Mang 13,000 Khmer labourers to work on the Vinh Te Canal. It is tempting to view both of these actions as specifically arising from Kai's revolt.

42 The best introduction to the vast literature of millenarianism is Burridge, Kenelm, New Heaven New Earth (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar which includes a discussion of invulnerability. See also Seidel, A. K., “The Image of the Perfect Ruler in Early Taoist Messianism”, History of Religions, IX, 9-10 (November 1969 - February 1970) 216–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Murdoch, op. cit., p. 63. For examples of amulets and charms, see Rolland, A. Souyris, “Les pirates au Cambodge”, BSEI, XXV, 4 (1950), 427–437Google Scholar.

43 The revolt is dealt with in PK, pp. 187-192; DNTL, XX and XXII, passim (XXI is not available in Australian, British or U.S. library collections) and Chandler, Cambodia Before the French, Ch. vii.

44 On this demonstration, see Mul, Bunchhan, Kuk Niyobay (Political Prison) (Phnom Penh, 1971), pp. 44–62Google Scholar; Reddi, V. M., A History of the Cambodian Independence Movement (Tirupati, 1970), pp. 82–86Google Scholar and my reviews of these books in JSS, LX, 1 (January 1972) 437-438 and JSEAS V, 1 (March 1974) 136-137. The monks were objecting to French proposals that would have romanized Cambodia's alphabet and substituted a Gregorian calendar for the Buddhist one.

45 Minn Mang wa s contemptuous of amulets. In 1834, to disprove Thai faith in such “sacred rocks”, he tied one to the neck of a duck, shot at it himself, and reported the duck's death: DNTL XV, 353.

46 These included, but were not confined to, uncertainty in naming a successor, diffusion of power among officials, the king's isolation and its effect on the information he received, and breakdowns in revenue collection.

47 For a discussion of these ideas, see Hanks, L. M., “Merit and Power in the Thai Social Order”, American Anthropologist, LXIV, 6 (December 1962), 1247–1261Google Scholar.

48 DNTL, VI, 77.

49 See, for example, Minh Mang's additional exhortations in DNTL, XIV, 60, XV, 77-78 and XVIII, 225-226.