Angkor And The Khmer Civilization, by Michael D. Coe

There are at least a few notable aspects of the Khmer civilization that are worthy of attention, and the most obvious of them is the enigmatic set of religious ruins popularly known as Angkor Wat (though this is but one of the many, many parts of a sprawling set of ruins devoted to four different religious traditions). While the beautiful and often banyan-infested ruins of Angkor’s many temples is justly a world-famous sign of advanced civilization, the history of the period is far less clear. For one, the buildings that survive are all religious buildings that have shown the evidence of various conversions due to the religious faith of Angkor’s rulers–from Shiva-worshipping Hindus to Vishnu-worshipping Hindus and both of the main schools of Buddhist thinking, overlaying native animism–as well as the evidence of numerous sacking, centuries of comparative neglect when the site was only inhabited by some monks, as well as the horrors of the 20th century. Humorously enough, many of the early European explorers of the site were in disbelief that the Khmer people themselves had the energy and advancement to be able to build the sort of glorious ruins that we can see at Angkor, thinking that another people had to do it who had been lost to history.

Yet as glorious as Angkor was as a set of ruins that demonstrates the ability of numerous powerful Khmer kings to control large amounts of labor in order to build wastefully but tastefully monumental heathen religious architecture, as a city (or really a set of nearby cities), it was only the center of Khmer civilization for around five and a half centuries or so. The origins of Angkor are somewhat obscure, and we have few inscriptions and even less in the way of reliable chronicle material (except for some shadowy references by the Chinese) to understand what was going on as the complexity of civilizations increased in the region. Likewise, there has been little attention paid to the post-Angkor period of Khmer civilization when after Angkor’s abandonment as a capital, the Khmer had a smaller and more compact nation centered around the region the French called Quatre-Bras for the four bodies of water that met out of a single point near Cambodia’s current capital, a period that has largely been viewed as a decline but one which also appears far more sustainable as a basis for Khmer culture rather than depending on powerful rulers capable of leading armies of invasion across Southeast Asia attacking vastly more numerous and powerful nations like Thailand and Vietnam. The post-Angkor civilization, although ignored, provides a better model of Cambodia as it exists in the present-day, and it would be better if that stage of Khmer civilization was better understood and appreciated.

In terms of its contents, this book is between 200 and 250 pages and is divided into eight generally chronological as well as topical chapters. The book begins with a short preface and chronological table (always a good foundation in a historical work) as well as an introduction (1) that discusses how it is that Khmer archaeology was developed by mostly French and other European researchers, as well as the periods of Khmer society. This is followed by a discussion of the setting of the Khmer civilization in the lower Mekong basin, as well as the regions that the Angkor civilization ruled over (2). This is followed by a discussion of the ethnogenesis of the Khmer people as well as the peopling of Southeast Asia as a whole, the big picture view of languages, as well as the language, writing, and identity of the Khmer (3). After this the author discusses the Khmer before history (4), looking at the transition from hunter gatherer society to early farming periods, the iron age chiefdoms, the puzzle of circular earthworks and ‘red soils’ earthworks, rock paintings, and the early signs of the Khmer presence. This leads to a discussion of the early kingdoms of the Khmer (5) that preceded classical Angkor, and various sites that these kingdoms built up. This is followed by a discussion of the history of the Khmer empire of Angkor (6), which includes a discussion of the dynastic history of the empire and the building of numerous sites in the Angkor region (and elsewhere). After this there is a discussion of the life and culture of classic Angkor as it can be uncovered by documents and bas-reliefs on the surviving ruins (7). The last chapter of the book discusses the decline and transformation of imperial Angkor to the post-classic period as well as the culture of the Khmer that endured after their empire had collapsed (8). The book ends with a list of rulers of the Khmer as it is known across all periods, visiting Angkor, notes, suggestions for further reading, sources of illustrations, and an index.