A HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
OF ANGKOR

Throughout his life, the American historian Michael Vickery (1931–2017) studied all periods of Cambodian history. Today, it is inconceivable to delve into the pre-Angkor period without the indispensable vademecum that is his monument: Society, Economics and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th-8th Centuries, or the post-Angkor period without Cambodia After Angkor, the Chronicular Evidence for the Fourteenth to Sixteenth Centuries.

Vickery did not ignore the modern era, producing his famous Cambodia 1975-1982 as well as other later works such as Cambodia: A Political Survey. He also authored a considerable number of articles, book chapters, and reviews on Southeast Asia, with the lion’s share devoted to Cambodia.

What about Angkor, you ask? Michael Vickery by no means ignored this sacred monster of Khmer history of more than five centuries. Evidence of his interest in this period includes studies of inscriptions, articles on the relationships between the Champa and the Angkor world, and, of course, articles on different periods of Angkor history.

What was missing was a book that brought together the work and research carried out by the author during his lifetime, a synthesis that offered a critical view of our knowledge of this period. It has now been done.

In the lines that follow, we will highlight the key points of this text, namely the author’s historiographical method, which result in both the novelty of the themes addressed and a salutary reworking of the clichés that mark Angkor history.

The historical sources

Readers of Michael Vickery have been familiar with his emphasis on characterizing and prioritizing the sources of Khmer history.

“The first difference between the Funan period and the early 7th century is that beginning in 611 A.D. Cambodians suddenly began to write many inscriptions on stone in both Khmer and Sanskrit. The first one which we know is K600 dated 611. Most of these inscriptions are about control and organization of land, people, and animals related to agriculture. They do not show any interest in the sea or long-distance trade. They contain names of gods and goddesses, kings, officials, and ordinary people.”

In his treatment of the pre-Angkor period, the inscriptions in old Khmer are the most interesting for reconstructing the framework of events and revealing the social structure which existed in ancient Cambodia – two recurring themes of the book.

The old demon of anachronism receives the ritual warning of the historian, who is well aware that, if the statement of the historical fact is in itself a first anachronism, safeguards remain essential: “We must not assume that what a king of Angkor several hundred years later thought about the past is a better interpretation for the Funan-Chenla period. Contemporary evidence from the place being studied must always be preferred to evidence from some other time or place.”

The treatment of Chinese sources must also be taken with precautions: “It must be realized that the Chinese stories about the political and geographical situations in Funan are very vague. The location of the capital recorded by the Chinese cannot be determined from the Chinese evidence…” 

The issue of the titles

One of the great originalities of the work concerns the analysis of the social fabric of ancient Cambodia as revealed by the statement of the titles in the inscriptions in old Khmer and not in Sanskrit: “This is a subject never, so far as I have determined, touched by previous historians of Cambodia, except very early by Aymonier in his Le Cambodge, where he began to explain also the class of poñ which I treated in detail in Vickery (1998), and then went on to other groups/classes/population categories...”

For the first time, the author provides the reader with a historical and geographical analysis of the titles that appear in inscriptions from the 7th century.

Michael Vickery, following Étienne Aymonier, offers a first exploration of these title systems with systematic examples drawn from inscriptions. This pioneering work is an essential foundation for subsequent studies.

The events that constitute Cambodian history

Apart from professional historians who have devoted themselves to Cambodian history, the educated public sees the history of Cambodia as a set of well-established events whose general framework is commonly accepted.

This is far from new because history, and not only Khmer history, is akin to a founding story of a national heritage and not a content subject to constant and often heartbreaking revisions.

Reading Vickery is a salutary deconstruction. It is indeed a question here of only affirming content that is based on real evidence or putting forward plausible hypotheses.

From this angle, there would not be much left of the history of Cambodia as established by Georges Coédès and relentlessly repeated ever since. It is a history that has considerably influenced the minds of many people with the help of painters and illustrators including the famous Maurice Fievet. In the 1960s, the latter even benefited from the technical support of Georges Coédès and Bernard Philippe Groslier to produce illustrations of the great moments in Khmer history.

What emerged was a people of builders at work, battles, kings sacrificing in the presence of Brahmins... In short, a grandiose pictorial vision which, if not conforming to reality, remained completely faithful to the historical works of the era.

A famous example, which the author takes up in the first chapter of the book, concerns the conquest of Funan by Chenla. According to Chinese sources, Chenla, a vassal state of Funan, revolted against the latter during the 7th century and defeated it. Following this victory, the political center of gravity of the Khmer world moved up North to Isanapura (Sambor Prey Kuk).

Vickery’s strategy is quite different. On the one hand, he examines the local texts to conclude that: “Now, looking at all the local records from the 6th to the middle of the 7th century, we see that they do not agree with the Chinese story of a war in which Chenla from the north defeated Funan in the south and replaced Funan as the center of Cambodia.”

On the other hand, he proposes an interpretation of the decline of Funan by the modification of the axes of maritime communication and therefore of the subsequent commercial relations: “In fact, research conducted in a materialist spirit on the Chinese records of relations with early Southeast Asia has revealed that by the 6th century Funan was in irreversible economic, and therefore political, decline, and that no conquest theory is required to explain its disappearance.”

This is not all. We should mention the themes that are analyzed in this work for the first time that are, to say the least, revolutionary: the succession to the throne, an analysis of the oaths of officials under Suryavarman I in the 11th century, penetrating pages on the administration. Michael Vickery’s work is truly a new classic work on key moments in Khmer history.

Jean-Michel Filippi. 

 

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In previous editions, we have recalled various battles and operations of the Vietnam War. As a partial conclusion to this series (1965-1975 / 2015-2025), in this issue we take a look at the famous photograph “Burst of Joy.” The photograph is dear to our hearts; unlike other somber representations of the conflict – notably “The Little Napalm Girl” – it evokes, as its name suggests, great joy and a note of hope.

Burst of Joy immortalizes the reunion of Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm and his family after he was held captive in North Vietnam. The image was taken by Slava Veder on March 17, 1973, at Travis Air Force Base in California. Its evocative power won it the 1974 Pulitzer Prize.

On October 27, 1967, during a mission over North Vietnam, Lt. Col. Stirm’s F-105s was shot down, and he subsequently spent five years in prison. He was detained in several camps, including the notorious Hanoi Hilton, and spent 281 days in solitary confinement. For part of this time, he shared a cell with John McCain.

Released on March 14, 1973, through Operation Homecoming, Lt. Col. Stirm was repatriated to the United States. On March 17, he stepped onto the tarmac at Travis Air Force Base with 20 or so other POWs. With his family in front of him, his daughter Lorrie broke away and ran towards him, opening her arms, almost flying, and click, the magic of photography took place – immortalizing this scene of pure joy. In the background are his two sons, other daughter, and his wife Loretta.

Lt. Col. Stirm had returned home, but things were not as joyful as they seemed in the photo. Three days before, he had received a Dear John letter from Loretta asking for a divorce. In her own way, Loretta had not been able to bear her husband’s absence. The couple separated in 1974.

Slava J. Veder was born on August 30, 1926, in Berkeley, California. After working in a variety of professions – including firefighter, sports journalist for the Richmond Independent and staff member of the Oakland Hockey Club – he joined the Alameda Times-Star in 1949. He moved to the Tulsa World, where he worked as editor-in-chief until 1956. After serving as editor for several other American newspapers, Veder returned to California in 1961 to work for the Associated Press, first in Sacramento and then in San Francisco. It was from this base that he produced “Burst of Joy” and won the Pulitzer Prize a year later.

Despite the Stirms’ setbacks, this photograph remains a poignant depiction of humanity in all its complexity: the struggle and suffering of war, the hope and relief of return, and above all, the strength of love and family ties in the most difficult of times. The picture captures a fleeting moment of pure, authentic happiness, and resonates as a powerful testament to human resilience and ability to overcome adversity and find light in dark times.

                         

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“And sometimes, when you close your eyes at night, you start dreaming about all those pieces floating in the air. Where was this, where was that...”

Federico Barocco, an archaeologist and consultant to the Institute for the Conservation of Monuments of the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism, is widely considered one of the foremost landscape archaeologists in Southeast Asia.

Born in Rome in 1975, this multilingual researcher of Italian origin studied at the Department of Oriental Studies of the Sapienza University of Rome, where he obtained a degree in Art History and Archaeology of East Asia in 2002. During this period, he studied the history and archaeology of the Far East at Peking University, visiting the main archaeological sites and collections in the Middle Kingdom. After extensive training in the methodologies and techniques applied to archaeological research, he took part in an archaeological and conservation project to re-evaluate the area of the Imperial Forum in central Rome.

In 2002, through the Lerici Foundation of Milan Polytechnic, Barocco worked as an aspiring field archaeologist and consultant on the main archaeological sites in central and southern Italy. He then joined the official Italian archaeological mission of the Lerici Foundation as a consultant and archaeologist for the UNESCO sites in Laos (Vat Phou), Myanmar (Sriksetra and the Pyu cities), and Vietnam (My Son).

His attraction to Southeast Asia was strengthened when he met Patrizia Zolese, head of archaeology and Asian culture at the Lerici Foundation. Known as “Italy’s Indiana Jones,” Zolese had dedicated her life to what she called archeo logos (archeo meaning ‘ancient’, logos meaning ‘history’, or ‘reason’ in Greek) by following the historic route of Alexander the Great from Greece to India via Afghanistan.

Barocco developed a deep love of Vietnam and its culture when he took part in a project to safeguard the world heritage site of My Son in 2004. One of the first Cham religious sites founded in the 4th century, My Son was rediscovered by Camille Paris in 1889 and first studied by the French architect Henri Parmentier in the early 20th century.

After a mission to Wat Phou and the associated ancient settlements in the cultural landscape of Champasak in Laos and a few years in the countryside of Quang Nam, Vietnam, Rico (as he is known to his friends and family) settled in his beloved town of Hoi An. It is a research base that he never envisions leaving, the place where he sets about reconstructing the monuments and their associated landscapes.

The task is not to restore, but to conserve. It is a work of imagination that seeks to combine archaeological evidence to control chronology, and to “think history” to better reconstruct its evolution and preserve what is left standing. Barocco specialises in the formation and development of the Khmer and Cham civilisations in Laos and Vietnam. He organises training courses for aspiring archaeologists and architects on heritage management and archaeological sites such as My Son and Vat Phou.

In 2008, Barocco was invited to join the scientific collaboration with the EFEO (École française d'Extrême-Orient) Centre in Hanoi and the Vietnamese Institute of Archaeology as part of a project on the History and Heritage of Central Vietnam that was being carried out in the provinces of Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh and Phu Yen. He is also collaborating on the cartographic edition of the book Champa and the Archeology of My Son (Vietnam) in 2009 alongside Andrew Hardy, Mauro Cucarzi, and Patrizia Zolese to trace the efforts made to preserve the remains of this unique culture that flourished on the coast of Central Vietnam from the fourth to the 13th century.

In 2010, he was appointed research associate at the Vietnamese Institute of Archaeology in Hanoi and at the Vietnamese Institute for the Conservation of Monuments of the Ministry of Culture, launching several local and international projects and collaborating on research into landscape archaeology and the conservation of cultural heritage in Vietnam. One of these projects concerns the Quang Ngai Long Wall, also known as the Great Wall of Vietnam – a 127.4 km rampart stretching from Quang Ngai province in the north to Binh Dinh province in the south. This defensive wall, built in 1819 by the Nguyen dynasty as a demarcation line against the Da Vach (the H're or Hrê, a population belonging to the Mon-Khmer linguistic family), winds its way through pristine rainforest-covered mountains and is the longest monument in Southeast Asia.

During a trip to Central Vietnam, visit the archaeological site of My Son alongside Federico Barocco. Set in an enchanting natural setting chosen to symbolise the grandeur and purity of Mount Meru, a mythical mountain considered to be the axis of the world, My Son is the cradle of the Hindu gods at the centre of the universe. Then take an interactive cultural tour of the narrow streets and unusual sites of the old quarter of Hoi An to discover the true historical value and secrets of this renowned former port city.