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Little is known about Cambodia's highland minorities during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese communists were infiltrating their homelands on the ground and American bombers attacking them from the sky. When inhabitants of the northeastern regions are mentioned in histories about the Khmer Rouge's coming to power, it is mainly as bodyguards of Pol Pot, who represented them as remnants of an uncorrupted ‘primitive democracy’. However, stories heard in the highlands raise different narratives, notably those of Bunong men and their families who left Mondulkiri province for Phnom Penh, where they enlisted in the weak pro-American Khmer Republic's army. These stories, told by the few who survived the mission and by the many who lost relatives to it, complicate the history of this convoluted period by bringing to light the Bunongs’ previously unmentioned involvement within the Forces Armées Nationales Khmères. Neither visceral rebels, nor unconditional allies, these Cambodian highlanders were and still are complex actors, whose engagements constitute a much-needed disturbance of dominant (historical) records.

Post-independence national historical writings have often been seen as a product of nationalist advocacy and modern nation-state formation. Moving beyond this perspective, this article considers how political leaders took a direct role in promoting different kinds and forms of collective historical thoughts to strengthen their leadership. Specifically, the article explores an active engagement of independent Cambodia's leaders such as Prince Sihanouk, Lon Nol, and Pol Pot, who independently saw national historical understanding as one's own monopolized source of power. It also discusses how different historical accounts in the country were shaped by, and kept up with, other important factors such as Cold War confrontations and regional and global historiographical trends, including “Modernist” and “Marxist” approaches. Discussing these factors helps us understand more critically national historical accounts, which were closely intertwined with specific socioreligious and political circumstances such as political rule and legitimacy, widespread public anxieties, and geopolitical tensions. It also sheds light on the substantial impact of state-imposed historical interpretations on society. As informed by the Cambodian case, this impact can be seen in the implementation of state projects stirred by certain kinds of historical understanding which consequently transformed the living conditions of thousands of people.

One of the most devastating periods in twentieth-century history was the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge over Cambodia. From April 1975 to the beginning of the Vietnamese occupation in late December 1978, the country underwent perhaps the most violent and far-reaching of all modern revolutions. These six essays search for what can be explained in the ultimately inexplicable evils perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Accompanying them is a photo essay that provides shocking visual evidence of the tragedy of Cambodia's autogenocide. \"The most important examination of the subject so far... Without in any way denying the horror and brutality of the Khmers Rouges, the essays adopt a principle of detached analysis which makes their conclusion far more significant and convincing than the superficial images emanating from the television or cinema screen.\" --Ralph Smith, The Times Literary Supplement \"A book that belongs on the shelf of every scholar interested in Cambodia, revolution, or communism... Answers to questions such as `What effect did Khmer society have on the reign of the Khmer Rouge?' focus on understanding, rather than merely describing.\" --Randall Scott Clemons, Perspectives on Political Science

With the prince’s ouster and Lon Nol’s ascension to power in Phnom Penh, So’n Ngọc Thành’s years of clandestine subversion against Norodom Sihanouk came to an end. In the years that followed, Thành tepidly reentered the government he had been removed from a generation prior, where he had hoped to play a large role in the creation and maintenance of a republican government. But just as he has been overlooked for years by historians of modern Cambodia, so too was he overlooked by the new rulers of Cambodia. Thành would instead continue to recruit Khmer Krom into the Cambodian army,

This chapter explores the history of Khmer Serei involvement with the US Special Forces and tracks the events that ultimately led to the overthrow of Norodom Sihanouk in spring 1970. While the rise of the communist Khmer Rouge was one of the most important features of this period, David Chandler, Ben Kiernan, and others have examined this in depth. This chapter will instead focus on another wing of anti-Sihanouk sentiment was also brewing during this period, and the rise of right-wing political elements in Cambodia, the Khmer Serei, the United States, and the coup that ultimately unseated the prince from

They include religious figures and pro-Western intellectuals like Venerable Um Sum, a Buddhist monk; My Samedi, a French-trained physician who is dean of the School of Medicine in Phnom Penh; Chan Ven, a writer; Venerable Tep Vong, the patriarch of the Buddhist clergy; Chem Snguon, a non-Communist diplomat; Khieu Kanharith, an outspoken journalist, and Lyda Sisowath, a cousin of Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

He was named the Father of Independence, Territorial Integrity and Khmer Unification. [Norodom Sihanouk]'s actual period of effective rule over Cambodia was from Nov. 9, 1953, when France granted independence to Cambodia, until March 18, 1970, when Lon Nol and the National Assembly deposed him. On March 18, 1970, while Sihanouk was out of the country traveling, the then Prime Minister Lon Nol convened the National Assembly, which voted to depose Sihanouk as head of state. After he was deposed, Sihanouk fled to Beijing. Prince Sihanouk returned to Cambodia on Nov. 14, 1991 after thirteen years in exile. In 1993, Sihanouk once again became King of Cambodia. However, he suffered from ill health and traveled repeatedly to Beijing for medical treatment.

This comprehensive documentary covers the wars in Indochina from 1946 to 1979.

''If the other side took over,'' Mr. [Lon Nol] said two weeks before he left Cambodia, ''they would kill all the educated people - the teachers, the artists, the intellectuals - and that would be a step towards barbarism.'' Lon Nol was born on Nov. 13, 1913, the son of Lon Hin, a minor official in the province of Preyveng, adjoining the Vietnamese border. His grandfather was once the governor of the province. As a son of a civil servant faithful to the French administration, the young Lon Nol received a good education - elementary school in Phnom Penh, high school from 1928 to 1934 at the Lycee Chasseloup-Laubat in Saigon. He resigned his post as Prime Minister in 1967 after a serious car accident that left him hospitalized for several months. But in August 1969, faced with an economic crisis and Government corruption, the Prince called Mr. Lon Nol back into service as Prime Minister of a ''salvation Government.''