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Military history of Cambodia

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The earliest traces of armed conflict in the territory that constitutes modern Cambodia date to the Iron Age settlement of Phum Snay in north-western Cambodia.[1]

Sources on Funan's military structure are rare. Funan represents the oldest known regional political entity, formed by the unification of local principalities. Whether these events must be categorized as conflict remains unclear[2] More information is available for Funan's successor state - Chenla, which has been characterized as distinctly bellicose as it was established by the military subjugation of Funan.[3] Chenla's early aristocrats heralded authority by public display of their noble genealogies carved onto stone stelae all over Indochina. Later, rulers increasingly embraced the concept of divine Hindu kingship.[4]

The Khmer Empire's territory and integrity was maintained through the Royal Army, personally commanded by the king. Records exist for regular conflict with the kingdom's neighbors, Champa in particular, as the empire effectively controlled Mainland South-east Asia by the 12th century.[5] Nonetheless, the Khmer kingdom suffered a number of serious defeats, such as the Cham invasion and sack of Angkor in 1177. Khmer military supremacy declined by the early 14th century.[6] Since the rise of the Siam Sukhothai Kingdom and later the Ayutthaya Kingdom the empire experienced a series of military setbacks, unable to repel repeated attacks, that eventually caused its collapse followed by the Post-Angkor Period.

The period of decline and stagnation (around 1450 to 1863) nearly ended the Khmer aristocrat's royal dynastic sovereignty and unity of the Khmer people as the result of prolonged encroachments by its neighbours Vietnam and Thailand.[7] In 1863 the Cambodian king acquiesced in the establishment of a French protectorate over his country to prevent its imminent incorporation into Vietnam in the east and the loss of its western provinces to Thailand.[8]

No centrally organized military actions took place during the French protectorate, although notable was an 1883/84 nationwide revolt "which saw thousands of French troops do battle with shadowy bands of Cambodian guerrilla insurgents throughout the countryside". Several local uprisings are accounted for, which caused considerable problems for the colonial authorities. However, mainly reactions to French tax rulings and other perceived legislative injustices and without clear political objective, these endeavours had no decisive consequences.[9] French colonial troops engaged in several conflicts with Thailand and suppressed revolts in Vietnam and Laos.[10]

The Japanese incursion and 1945 coup d'état initiated a decade of political and ethnic re-emancipation of Cambodia, brought about without large-scale military action.[11] Since Cambodia's independence in 1954 the country was to be the stage for a series of proxy wars of the cold war powers, foreign incursions and civil wars, that only effectively ended with the UN Mandate in the early 1990s.[12][13]

  1. ^ "Archaeological evidence of warfare and weaponry at Phum Snay". Retrieved 13 January 2018.
  2. ^ John N. Miksic (30 September 2013). Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea. NUS Press. ISBN 9789971695583. Retrieved 13 January 2018.
  3. ^ Lavy, Paul A. (2003). "As in Heaven, So on Earth: The Politics of Visnu Siva and Harihara Images in Preangkorian Khmer Civilisation". Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 34 (1). academia edu: 21–39. doi:10.1017/S002246340300002X. S2CID 154819912. Retrieved 23 December 2015.
  4. ^ John Norman Miksic (14 October 2016). Ancient Southeast Asia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781317279044. Retrieved 1 January 2018.
  5. ^ "Two Historical Records of the Kingdom of Vientiane - That was probably also the reason for the Cambodian conquests in Champa in the reigns of the Angkor kings Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII" (PDF). Michael Vickery’s Publications. Retrieved 30 June 2015.
  6. ^ Woolf, D. R. (3 June 2014). A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing, Volume 2 - Tiounn Chronicle. Routledge. ISBN 9781134819980. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
  7. ^ "March to the South (Nam Tiến)". Khmers Kampuchea-Krom Federation. Archived from the original on 26 June 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
  8. ^ Chapuis, Oscar (1 January 2000). The Last Emperors of Vietnam: From Tu Duc to Bao Dai. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 48. ISBN 9780313311703. Retrieved 3 April 2015.
  9. ^ "The French in Cambodia: Years of revolt (1884 - 1886)". Phnom Penh Post. 11 December 1998. Retrieved 13 January 2018.
  10. ^ Stuart-Fox, Martin (1997). A History of Laos. Cambridge University Press. pp. 24–25. ISBN 0-521-59746-3.
  11. ^ Geoffrey Gunn. "The Great Vietnamese Famine of 1944-45 Revisited". The Asia-Pacific Journal. Retrieved 13 January 2018.
  12. ^ "Conflict in Cambodia, 1945-2002 by Ben Kiernan - American aircraft dropped over half a million tons of bombs on Cambodia's countryside, killing over 100.000 peasants..." (PDF). Yale University. Retrieved 7 July 2015.
  13. ^ "COMMUNISM AND CAMBODIA - Cambodia first declared independence from the French while occupied by the Japanese. Sihanouk, then King, made the declaration on 12 March 1945, three days after Hirohito's Imperial Army seized and disarmed wavering French garrisons throughout Indo-China" (PDF). DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE. Retrieved 7 July 2015.

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