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| "Phnom Penh until very recently (for visitors at least) was the prettiest major city in Southeast Asia. This absorbing study takes us from its humble beginnings through colonialism, independence, war and revolution and leaves us, in his final pages, facing the crowded, globalized and almost unbreathable metropolis of 2007."-David Chandler, Monash University
"The name Phnom Penh doesn't whisper and scream in literature as does that of Saigon, for all that the Cambodian capital has a darker recent history. Graham Greene didn't stay there, Norman Lewis did (but failed to have the same feeling for Cambodia as for Thailand), while Pierre Loti, Somerset Maugham and other languid fellow travellers were only in transit en route to Angkor Wat. André Malraux wrote a sneer about a 'land of decay', but then he had been detained after his attempt to smuggle out chunks of temple sculptures for sale in New York. And yet, as described by Milton Osborne, who has known it for 50 years, it does so deserve first-rank writing. Besides the Khmer Rouge evacuation of the metropolis in 1975 (a dystopian fiction made murderously real), there had been Sihanouk time, mid-50s to 1970, when, in response to Peter O'Toole publicly dissing him after location shooting upriver for the film of Lord Jim, the prince directed movies starring his circle and their Cadillacs. And the only place to stay, the Grand, Hotel de Madame Duguet, surely demands a novel of sustained deliquescence."-The Guardian |
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Forever linked in the public mind with the Pol Pot tyranny, Phnom Penh only became Cambodia's permanent capital in 1866. Long neglected by Western travellers, in the sixteenth century it was home to Iberian missionaries and freebooters who briefly held Cambodia's fate in their hands. It faded in significance until France established a colonial protectorate over Cambodia in 1863. As the colonialists robbed the Cambodian king of his temporal power, their protection enhanced his symbolic importance, setting the scene for the emergence of one of the most intriguing rulers of the twentieth century, King Norodom Sihanouk.
The city Sihanouk ruled from 1941 to 1970 was a mix of traditional palaces, Buddhist temples and transplanted French architecture. In the 1960s Phnom Penh deserved its reputation as the most attractive city in Southeast Asia. But after 1970 all this was to change, and a terrible civil war was followed by the Khmer Rouge's capture of the city in 1975. Since the defeat of Pol Pot in 1979, Phnom Penh has slowly recovered, once again attracting perceptive travellers.
- CITY OF ROYALTY AND COLONIZERS: Kings, courts and battles with French administrators; royal ceremonies, dancers and elephants; foreign intrigue and carpetbaggers who sought and failed to find riches.
- CITY OF CULTURE: A rich local culture that became a headache for French officials; traditional architecture and colonial buildings that remain today; notable literary visitors from Somerset Maugham to André Malraux.
- CITY OF EVIL AND REBIRTH: The terrible rule of Pol Pot; the Tuol Sleng extermination centre where 17,000 men, women and children were tortured and killed as "enemies of the state"; the return to a fragile normality.
MILTON OSBORNE first lived in Phnom Penh in 1959-61 and has continued to return regularly to the city. The author of nine books on the history and politics of Southeast Asia, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra.
ISBN 1-904955-40-1
£12.00 (paperback)
January 2008, 256 pages, maps, 30 b&w illustrations |
