From a pile of stones to a national symbol

Introduction

Preah Vihear Temple is viewed by Cambodian and Thai nationalists as a potent representation of the nation. Shane Strate’s (2013) article, published in this journal, provided fascinating insight into Thai historiography and the political contexts and nationalist discourses underpinning the rise of Preah Vihear Temple as a monument of national significance. He posited the temple’s rise in the context of a Thai ‘national humiliation discourse’, which emphasizes territorial loss and national suffering experienced by Siam at the hands of Western imperialist intervention in South East Asia. Prime Minister Phibun Songkhram promoted Preah Vihear Temple as nationally significant for Thailand in his government’s nationalist irredentism campaign during Japanese imperialist advancement in South East Asia during the Second World War (Strate, 2013).

In Cambodia, however, we know relatively little about how the border temple complex has emerged from obscurity to embody the nation in Cambodian nationalist discourse. Therefore, this article seeks to examine the stakeholders, contexts, and specific national political situations implicated in the emergence of the ancient temple complex as a site of national significance. It offers a mirror image of Strate’s article, thus making it an addition to the historiography of the temple conflict. In Thailand, Preah Vihear Temple is symbolically synonymous with defeat and national suffering; in Cambodia it represents victory and national pride.

The Cambodian state’s publicizing of the temple dispute with Thailand between 1958 and 1962 brought Preah Vihear Temple to the attention of the Cambodian people. Furthermore, the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s Judgement in 1962 awarding victory to Cambodia marked an important moment in the temple’s emergence as a symbol of Cambodian national pride. Seeing the enormous political benefits that could be reaped from the aura of the victory following the ICJ ruling and the temple’s symbolic potential, the Cambodian government of Prince Norodom Sihanouk invested considerable attention and resources towards constructing Preah Vihear Temple as a representation of Sihanouk’s national achievements in building post-independence Cambodia. Through its integration into the leader’s sophisticated nation-building programmes, the temple rose to become a diffused, multifaceted symbol of the Cambodian nation.

Emerging as Cambodia’s post-independence leader, Sihanouk’s most immediate political priority was to transform the national enthusiasm, hope, and pride emanating from gaining independence into national development and nation-building. However, he lacked the necessary resources required to build a modern Cambodian nation-state. Moreover, he faced major constraints to his political leadership caused by various domestic and external factors. To address his desire for nation-building and the constraints posed to his political leadership, Sihanouk chose to publicize the Preah Vihear temple conflict with Thailand as a significant national issue. His country’s victory at the ICJ and his government’s subsequent integration of the temple into its nation-building programmes were communicated to the Cambodian people in ways that benefited the leader’s politics of nation-building.

The research for this article deployed a qualitative methodology, integrating archival research with data from three in-depth interviews with Cambodian scholars conducted in Phnom Penh in 2012. The three individuals were Professors Khing Hoc Dy, Ang Choulean, and Sorn Samnang, whom I interviewed on 26 June, 3 September, and 7 September 2012 respectively. ¹ The interviews were semi-structured and posed probing questions to the three scholars. I asked them for their recollections of the broad topic of the Cambodia-Thailand dispute over Preah Vihear Temple in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly on such themes as the Cambodian state’s uses of media propaganda and nationalist campaigns and the general reaction of Cambodian people living both in Phnom Penh and in rural areas towards the conflict.

The three intellectuals were qualified to comment on the history of the temple conflict because they were born in the early 1940s. Therefore, in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the dispute occurred, they were mature enough to witness various events as they were unfolding. Moreover, the three individuals are highly respected scholars of Cambodian history, literature, and culture, whose recollections of persons, events, and years were clear, unlike the accounts of some ‘ordinary’ people which can be confusing. In addition to the interviews, I analyzed archival materials including old newspaper articles, magazines, pamphlets, and state propaganda materials from the National Archive of Cambodia.

Following this Introduction, the article is divided into three main sections and a conclusion. First, it looks briefly at the contexts of the Preah Vihear Temple conflict to explain how and when the temple came to the attention of the Cambodian people and became a symbol of national pride. The second section examines the discourses of Sihanouk’s politics of postcolonial nation-building to explain why the leader chose to put the temple high on the national agenda. The third section examines his government’s integration of the temple into its nation-building programmes, through which it gained its status as a diffused, multifaceted symbol of the Cambodian nation.

Preah Vihear Temple: From obscurity to symbol of national pride

Preah Vihear Temple, situated on top of Dangrek Mountain just metres away from Cambodia’s modern state boundary line with Thailand, had been little known to the general Cambodian population prior to the eruption of the conflict between both countries in the late 1950s. It was not until Prince Sihanouk’s Sangkum Reastr Niyum (People’s Socialist Community) regime that the temple became important in Cambodian national identity discourses. Soon after Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953, ownership of the ancient ruins became a source of contention between Cambodia and Thailand. The Thai government of Field Marshal Phibun Songkhram seized the opportunity of France’s departure from Cambodia to dispatch a small police unit to Preah Vihear Temple and hoisted the Thai flag there. This quickly drew protests from the Cambodian government, who viewed Thailand’s actions as an encroachment on their country’s border territory and national sovereignty. Cambodia sent diplomatic notes to the Thai government in 1954 but received no reply. After a bilateral negotiation between both countries in Bangkok in 1958 failed to produce any result, the Cambodian government instituted legal proceedings against Thailand at the ICJ on 6 October 1959 (see ICJ, 1962: 31–32). The temple dispute created diplomatic tensions and severely affected relations between Phnom Penh and Bangkok. On two occasions, in November 1958 and in October 1961, it resulted in the suspension of diplomatic relations and the closure of the border between the two countries (see Leifer, 1961–1962).

Portraying themselves as the defenders of national heritage, leaders in both countries played up the temple dispute to achieve political goals in their respective countries (see, for Thailand, Strate, 2013; Puangthong, 2013). Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia faced political challenges from within and without. Domestically, France’s decolonization created a power vacuum in the newly independent Cambodia, making the country vulnerable to different groups competing for political power. Externally, broader Cold War contexts put Sihanouk’s government in a very uncomfortable position and made his foreign policy deviate from its former stance of neutrality. The prince found his country being sandwiched between two traditional enemies, Thailand to the West and South Vietnam to the East, who were now America’s allies. The leader manipulated the symbolism of Preah Vihear Temple and the dispute with Thailand to rally popular support and to unify the nation behind his government.

Sihanouk’s government embarked on nationalist campaigns to portray Thailand as Cambodia’s enemy and Preah Vihear Temple as nationally significant for the country. The government employed its state media resources and propaganda machine to achieve their objectives. News concerning the temple conflict and government anti-Thailand nationalist propaganda were disseminated extensively in the most widely read and circulated state-owned newspaper, Neak cheat niyom (the Nationalist). ² Cambodia had more than a dozen newspapers and magazines at that time. Many of them were government mouthpieces, which ‘rarely carried more than one opinion: that of chief of state Sihanouk’ (Mehta, 1997: 37; see also Khing, 2007: 25).

In addition to print media, the government used its state-owned National Radio Phnom Penh to broadcast news about the Preah Vihear conflict. Cambodia did not yet operate a television network around the time of the dispute. The country’s first television network, the Royal Cambodian TV Station, did not come into operation until February 1966 (Mehta, 1997: 87).

Hence, ordinary Cambodian people in Phnom Penh city and in the provinces received news about the temple conflict and the government’s nationalist propaganda predominantly from national radio broadcasts. During Sihanouk’s Sangkum regime, nearly every home in Phnom Penh had a radio and many city dwellers heard of their country’s conflict with Thailand through the national radio. ³ Ang Choulean noted:

At that time in Phnom Penh, let’s say when there was news of a car killing a person on the road, people in the whole city heard about it and talked about it for weeks. So a national issue like the dispute with Thailand and the Preah Vihear case, everyone knew of. Unlike nowadays, Phnom Penh of that time was small and had a small population. ⁴

His speeches covered different aspects of national and international issues, relating to Cambodia’s friends and foes. He accused his domestic political opponents, Son Ngoc Thanh and Sam Sary, of colluding with the Thai and South Vietnamese governments against Cambodia. Sihanouk also used the Preah Vihear Temple conflict to discredit dissidents by arguing that they were not genuine Khmer nationalists because they were collaborating with the Thai state, which wanted to seize the Khmer temple from Cambodia. ¹⁰ Khing Hoc Dy and Sorn Samnang observed that people in the provinces generally believed what the prince said. ¹¹ Sorn Samnang stressed, ‘People believed his words with confidence and faith’. ¹² Their accounts are also corroborated by Chandler (1991: 88), who notes that between 1955 and 1966 there was an affectionate relationship between Prince Sihanouk and his people.

The Cambodian government further propagated its nationalist propaganda about the Preah Vihear conflict through radio broadcasts of lakhaon nyeay (speaking theatre) performed by the state’s national troupe of speaking theatre performers called krom lakhaon cheat nai brates Kampuchea (the National Theatre Group of Cambodia). ¹³ In everyday language, people generally referred to lakhaon niyeay performed by this troupe as lakhaon cheat (national theatre). Considered a modern form of theatre, the speaking theatre was very popular. Lakhaon cheat performances were regularly broadcast on state-owned national radio (see Daravuth and Muan, 2001: 63–140) and it was through these programmes that it became an important entertainment for both urban and rural dwellers. ¹⁴

During the tense atmosphere of 1961, lakhaon cheat performed and broadcast the Legend of Preah Ko Preah Keo and the Legend of Nak Ta Kleang Moeung several times. ¹⁵ Both legends have their roots in historical relations between Cambodia and Thailand, and both portray Thai kings, symbols of the Thai state, in a negative light. The Thai leaders are shown as having the evil intention of invading and capturing Cambodia’s territory and its national treasures. The choice to perform and broadcast these two legends on national radio in 1961 during the temple dispute was, without doubt, a calculated decision. Both stories delineated distinctive national and ethnic identities, differentiating the Khmer from the Thai, and both contained strong nationalist appeals against Thailand, with Cambodia portrayed as the victim of Thai aggression.

Through these various means, Preah Vihear Temple was brought to the national attention of the Cambodian people. It changed from an obscure border temple complex to a symbol of the Cambodian nation. Furthermore, when the ICJ announced victory for Cambodia in its 1962 judgment, the Cambodian state held festive celebrations and the temple assumed a new status in the nationalist discourse as a symbol of national pride. News of Cambodia’s victory was broadcast on national radio by Ma Lao Pi, a talented lyricist, poet, and renowned commentator during the Sangkum regime. His eloquent commentary conjured up an image of the temple as a symbol of pride and hope for newly-independent Cambodia. Under Sihanouk’s leadership, Cambodia was claimed to have regained the victory and glory it had commanded during the Angkorian era. ¹⁶

Sihanouk’s politics of postcolonial nation-building

Like other leaders of postcolonial states, Sihanouk took great pride in attaining independence from France for his country, proudly referring to himself as the Father of Cambodia’s national independence. ¹⁷ He aspired to achieve levels of political and economic progress and modernity for Cambodia similar to states in the West. ¹⁸ As he stated in a 1992 interview with the Los Angeles Times, ‘During the ‘50 s and ‘60 s, I focused on defending our independence, regaining our territory and building up a modern Cambodia’. ¹⁹

Hansen and Stepputat (2001: 10–11) note that it was common for leaders of postcolonial states to have such modernizing and nation-building aspirations for their respective countries, as they had been influenced by the Western construction of a nation-state system which became universalized after the Second World War as the dominant model for states and their associated international relations. Sihanouk’s immediate political priority of post-independence nation-building was also driven by the fact that he needed a new framework or arena within which to consolidate his own authority. He could not go backwards and adopt the precolonial political order because the colonial encounter had fundamentally altered the political relationship between the ruler and the ruled and had introduced new ideas and concepts about power, politics, state, and nation. Hence he needed to work with the notion of the Cambodian nation in order to define his country’s place in the shifting world of post-Second World War nation-states.

Leaders of postcolonial states were frequently confronted with an array of major constraints to their modernizing and nation-building agendas. These typically included a lack of sufficient resources, especially state revenue (Slater, 2010: 3); the absence of a strong state tradition (Myrdal, 1968, cited in Reid, 2010: 26); the state’s limited ability to control territory (Roy, 2007: 26; Slater, 2010: 36); political fragmentation among political elites causing political instability (Battersby, 1998; Slater, 2010); challenges for ruling elites to produce effective leadership (Apter, 1968: 48); leaders’ difficulties in repositioning their countries within the new international economic and political system (Sidel, 2012: 116); and suspicion between neighbouring states making it difficult to forge mutual peaceful and productive relationships (Geertz, 1973: 237).

Sihanouk faced a number of these constraints. First, he was unable to forge peaceful relationships with Cambodia’s neighbours, Thailand and South Vietnam. He was deeply suspicious and hateful of Thai Prime Minister Sarit Thanarat and South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, who likewise disliked the Cambodian leader and accused him of being ‘a stalking-horse for communism in the region’ (see Osborne, 1994: 151–152). Sihanouk also perceived the Thai state as a serious threat to the existence of Cambodia. His view was influenced by a combination of factors: the historical legacy of enmity between Cambodia and Thailand; Thailand’s support for Cambodian dissidents attempting to undermine and overthrow him; Thailand’s pro-America foreign policy stance in contrast to Cambodia’s adopted policy of neutrality; and Thailand’s seizure of the Khmer Temple of Preah Vihear in 1954. Osborne (2008: 3) writes that, from 1953 when Cambodia gained independence up until 1970, Cambodia and Thailand suffered strained relations. Both Sihanouk and Sarit hurled accusations and insults at each other (Osborne, 1994: 107–108). The prince told his citizens that the Thai leader was a very immoral person and a womanizer. ²⁰ Besides, Sihanouk mockingly called Thailand’s Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman ‘khormoan’ (‘chicken sweet stew’). ²¹ In Thailand, a riddle was created to ridicule the Cambodian prince: ‘What color [si] do Thai people hate?’. The answer is ‘neither red [si daeng] nor black [si dam], but Si-hanouk’ (Charnvit, 2003: 5).

The second major challenge to Sihanouk’s nation-building was the fragmentation among Cambodia’s political elites. His authority was challenged by other political groups vying for control of post-independence Cambodia. The political forces presenting the most formidable hurdles to Sihanouk’s rule were the Democratic Party, Son Ngoc Thanh’s Khmer serei (Free Khmer) movement, and, to a lesser extent, the Khmer communists, who operated as secret political cells in the 1950s and early 1960s (see Osborne, 1994: 108–111). The Democratic Party was attempting to introduce a modern parliamentary system to Cambodia and was popular among the country’s urban population. Sihanouk viewed this as an attempt to limit his monarchical power to only symbolic and ceremonial roles. Sihanouk’s most bitter political foe was Son Ngoc Thanh, an ethnic Khmer from Kampuchea Krom in the lower Mekong delta region of Southern Vietnam. He was an intellectual and leader of a dissident force operating in Cambodia’s border regions with Thailand. Thanh’s Khmer serei movement received support from the Thai and South Vietnamese governments. It operated to undermine the Phnom Penh government from the early 1950s up to 1970 through sporadic guerrilla attacks and anti-government radio broadcasts from its own station, Radio Phnom Dangraek.

The third major constraint facing Sihanouk was the repositioning of Cambodia’s foreign policy in the new international context of Cold War tensions between the world’s superpowers. He adopted neutrality and non-alignment as the guiding principles for his country’s foreign policy, with Cambodia pursuing a middle path of being neither an ally nor an enemy to either of the two competing political blocs. However, he found it increasingly difficult to maintain this path as the domestic, regional, and international political situations grew increasingly complex and fluid. As a result, his foreign policy veered off course.

Caught between his aspiration to build a modern nation of Cambodia and the constraints on his leadership, Prince Sihanouk relied on, among other things, nationalist sentiment as one of the key resources in achieving his political objectives. Geertz (1973: 237) notes that ruling elites in postcolonial countries relied greatly on nationalism for nation-building purposes. Nationalism became ‘normalized as a universal project in the postcolonial world’ (Gupta, 1998: 14). Similar to other postcolonial leaders, such as Indonesia’s President Sukarno (see Strassler, 2009: 75), Sihanouk tried to establish himself as the embodiment of the Cambodian nation in a bid to unify the disparate population behind him and to discredit his political opponents, who were also laying competing claims to representing the nation. He skilfully interwove his public image as the country’s leader with the abstract notion of the nation, instilling in the Cambodian people the perception that Sihanouk was Cambodia and Cambodia was Sihanouk (Barnett, 1990: 122). The inference was that a Cambodia without Sihanouk would be catastrophic.

Unlike other concrete resources for nation-building such as money, technology, political institutions, and human resources, which would take tremendous effort and a lengthy time to achieve, nationalist fervour was a much less expensive project to invest in, more readily available for manipulation or cultivation, and quicker to trigger responses from the population. The notion of Sihanouk as an embodiment of the nation could be relatively easily nurtured through the deployment of nationalist symbolism, rhetoric, and state rituals, which were conveyed to the mass population through the state’s media, public education system, government officials, and its army of public servants.

A particularly important means of enabling Sihanouk to achieve his politics of representing the nation was through the mobilizing of old cultural symbols and practices and the sacralizing of these as ‘national’ symbols or ‘national’ identities, in what Hobsbawm (1983) calls a process of ‘inventing traditions’. Cambodia’s landscape was rich with scattered fragments of ancient culture such as monuments, religious sites, music, dance, and folklore. Sihanouk seized on these elements as national cultural symbols and skilfully positioned himself as their great defender, guardian, and promoter. ²² In Thailand, Phibun also adopted nationalism as a hallmark of his regime. His revival of Thai tradition and restoration of Thai cultural heritage sites were important parts of his effort to appropriate royal prerogatives to consolidate his personal political power over both the military and the throne (see Peleggi, 2002: 18–19). In the case of Sihanouk, his patronage of Khmer cultural heritage allowed him to merge his role of traditional Khmer kingship with that of modern head of state within an emerging discourse of postcolonial nation-building.

Through the cultural politics of representing the nation, the prince was able to invoke the Cambodian people to re-imagine the country’s past in ways that linked his Sangkum government to the ancient Khmer Empire of Angkor. Sangkum was depicted as being as prosperous and glorious as the Angkorian period, which is widely considered among Cambodians as their country’s golden era. Sihanouk claimed that through his government’s mission of repairing and building a prosperous post-independence Cambodia, the nation was being restored to its former grandeur.

It was in this context that the Cambodian state under Sihanouk specifically invested in transforming Preah Vihear Temple from a site of local cultural and religious worship to one of national significance. Unlike Angkor Wat, Preah Vihear was little known before the conflict with Thailand erupted in 1958. By the 1940s, Angkor Wat’s image was already on Cambodia’s national flag and its emergence as a potent symbol of the pride and glory of the Khmer race largely stemmed from the work of French colonialists (see Edwards, 2007: 19–63). As Cambodia’s post-independence leader, Sihanouk needed to cultivate a fresh image for his regime. Preah Vihear, perched on a mountaintop with stunning views and demonstrating a high level of Khmer architectural aspiration in harmonizing between the temple’s structure and the landscape on which it was built, emerged as the ideal symbol due to its situation on a new disputed state boundary line between Cambodia and Thailand. Capitalizing on Cambodia’s victory in the 1962 ICJ judgement, Sihanouk promoted Preah Vihear as a triumph for himself and for the new modern Cambodian nation. Where Angkor Wat could be held as a triumph from the past, Preah Vihear was totemic of the triumph of the now.

Preah Vihear Temple: From symbol of national pride to durable omnipresent emblem of the nation

After the ICJ victory, Prince Sihanouk’s government continued to identify with Preah Vihear Temple for its nation-building and state-building programmes. The aura of the temple as representing Khmer national pride was further promoted and integrated into the government’s nation-building projects. Through state-sponsored projects, Preah Vihear was constructed as a durable, multifaceted, and omnipresent symbol of the Cambodian nation. The sub-sections below discuss several of the most important of these projects.

State ceremony and rituals

On 16 June 1962, one day after the ICJ’s judgment, a large crowd converged in front of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh to celebrate the victory. The Cambodian Commentary, a government monthly review published in English, in its May–June 1962 issue put the number of those assembled in the thousands. The photo in the issue gives the impression that it was a state-orchestrated event. Looking at the picture, one cannot help but come to the conclusion that many of the people in the crowd were public servants. Placards containing the names of the government’s various ministries were displayed among columns of the crowd. In addition to the placards, some people carried portraits of Prince Sihanouk. At least one placard with the message ‘baramei samdech euv’ (sacred power of Prince Papa) is seen in the photo, suggesting that a link had been established to attribute Cambodia’s victory over Thailand at the ICJ to Sihanouk’s divine power. The whole crowd seems in a cheerful, celebratory mood, with many of the people smiling, clapping hands, and waving their arms in the air (see Cambodian Commentary, 1962: 26).

Prince Sihanouk then emerged on the balcony of the Salle Chanchhaya, a pavilion built into the Palace wall, to address the crowd. After expressing gratitude to members of the counsel team representing Cambodia at the ICJ, his speech touched on different cultural, national, and political themes, which together conjured up an image of Preah Vihear Temple as the embodiment of Cambodia’s national and cultural heritage just like the marvellous Angkor Wat Temple. He said:

So far as Preah Vihear is concerned, we should not forget that this is not merely a bit of territory without any special significance, but is a historic site containing a temple which, like Angkor, has incalculable importance in our eyes, representing as it does our past history, our civilization, our art and our religious faith. (Quoted in Cambodian Commentary, 1962: 25)

In his speech, the leader also constructed the symbolism of the temple as representing national security. The ICJ victory was interpreted as significant for the nation because it would prevent Thailand from further encroaching into Cambodia’s territory. He said:

This victory gives us in the first place a sense of greater security, and is a warning to those who have imperialist designs on our territory, and more especially to Thailand which is likely to have been discouraged from further attempts at grabbing pieces of Cambodian territory. (Quoted in Cambodian Commentary, 1962: 24)

Sihanouk also wasted no time in linking the Preah Vihear victory to his narrative of nation-building. He constructed the symbolism of the temple victory as a clear testament of his achievement for the nation. He related the temple victory to his national policy, proving that the latter was on the right track otherwise the former would not have been achieved. He used the victory to call for national unity and support for his leadership:

I should like to draw your attention to the inestimable advantage we derive from our unity. This victory, like the others which have preceded it, is to be ascribed to this factor. Without this unity…without the unfailing and wholehearted support I received, our success would not have been possible. (Quoted in Cambodian Commentary, 1962: 25)

The celebratory atmosphere in front of the Royal Palace and Sihanouk’s eloquent speech together conjured up an image of Preah Vihear Temple as the multi-dimensional symbol of the Cambodian nation. Preah Vihear Temple’s status was now equivalent to that of Angkor Wat; it was now not only a religious site, but also a representation of Cambodia’s national identity, pride, unity, security, and achievement.

Seven months after the celebration in Phnom Penh and the completion of the construction of National Road 12, ²⁶ Sihanouk led his entourage to Preah Vihear Temple to preside over a grand religious and state ritual, which was especially symbolic because it concentrated cultural and also national political power right at the temple site. The ceremony took place on 5 January 1963 and was attended by nearly 1000 people. Sihanouk led his entourage on foot from the base of the mountain to its top (see Figure 1). Kambuja Suriya Journal described the ceremony in its January 1963 issue as follows:

On 5 January 1963, the beloved and respectful Prince Father of national heritage…continued his journey to the Mountain of Preah Vihear Temple…to pay his respect to the Three Jewels in Buddhism; to make an offering of food to the monks…and to preside over the ceremony raising our Khmer national flag on the Mountain of Preah Vihear to symbolize the return to our beloved country of our Khmer ancestral heritage. ( Kambuja Suriya Journal, 1963: 80–81)

The journal also gave a long list of important guests and foreign dignitaries attending the event:

Samdech Preah Norodom Sihanouk…accompanied by many high-ranking military and civilian officials from the capital city and delegates from provinces, districts and communes…As for foreign dignitaries, we saw ambassadors and representatives from embassies…foreign media correspondents and reporters…As for the monk delegates, we observed that there were more than 40 monks led by the Supreme Patriarch of the Maha Nikaya (Chuon Nath) and the Supreme Patriarch of the Dhammayut Nikaya (Kol Tes). ( Kambuja Suriya Journal, 1963: 89–90)

The blending of traditional Buddhist religious practices with the state’s ritual of raising the national flag on the Mountain of Preah Vihear Temple was symbolically significant for the national culture, the Cambodian state, and for Preah Vihear Temple. By merging ancient practices with modern concepts of nation and state, Sihanouk engaged in a process of ‘inventing traditions’ to create a sense of continuity with a suitable historic past in order to serve a new national purpose (Hobsbawm, 1983: 1–6). The Cambodian state, which had received independence from France nearly 10 years before, needed to ritualize such invented traditions to reconstruct Khmer traditional culture, an important source of power and authority for the postcolonial state’s ruling elites.

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Figure 1.

Prince Norodom Sihanouk at Preah Vihear Temple.

Kertzer (1988: 5) writes, ‘Through symbolism we recognize who are the powerful and who are the weak, and through the manipulation of symbols the powerful reinforce their authority’. By establishing a cultural link between Preah Vihear Temple and Angkor and identifying himself with the kings of Angkor, Sihanouk manipulated the symbolism of Preah Vihear Temple to reinforce people’s existing perception and acceptance of the hierarchy of political authority, one that placed Sihanouk at the apex of the power pyramid.

As for Preah Vihear Temple, the state’s organized ritual at the site ingrained the notion that the temple was a national icon in Cambodian nationalist thought. Cambodia’s national flag, like the national flags of certain other countries, is considered sacred and is supposedly worshipped by people of the entire land. That the national flag, representing the life of the Cambodian nation, was raised at the temple site in the ceremony presided over by Sihanouk, the highest government figure, and blessed by the Buddhist ritual conducted by the highest authority of Cambodia’s Buddhist Sangha, with the whole event witnessed by foreign ambassadors, diplomats, and journalists, attached a grand national cultural meaning to Preah Vihear Temple. In Cambodian nationalist thought, the ancient monument became not only a symbol of the country’s victory over Thailand, but a representation of the very life of the Cambodian nation.

Creating Preah Vihear province

One year after the ceremony on the Mountain of Preah Vihear Temple, the Cambodian government redrew the country’s national territorial space, creating a new province named after the border temple by Royal Decree dated 22 July 1964. The newly created Preah Vihear province had four districts, three of which used to belong to Kampong Thom province and one newly established district which covered the areas of three communes taken from Siem Reap province (Royal Kingdom of Cambodia, 1964).

The politics of territorial identity is instrumental for states in communicating their political ideologies and agendas (Keith and Pile, 1993: 2). Thus, the Sangum government’s redrawing of the country’s national territorial space was significant for its politics of postcolonial nation-building, enabling the state to communicate such important notions of nation, society, and culture under its own spatial control as distinct from those in the territorial space controlled by other states (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992: 6).

The Cambodian state’s efforts to reinforce its exclusive ownership of the national, social, and cultural dimensions of the temple provide an insight into the nationalist thought and views of the Cambodian ruling elites towards the Thai state. They reflect the Cambodian elites’ understanding of the power relations between a smaller, weaker Cambodia and a bigger, more powerful neighbour. Because of the perceived power inequality, the Cambodian elite feared that the border temple, just some 100 metres away from the boundary line, might slip back into Thailand’s hands because the Thai state and its nationalists did not show any signs of giving up claims to the ancient Khmer monument (see Singh, 1962: 26; St John, 1994: 66).

Besides serving the state’s politics of territorial identity, the establishment of Preah Vihear province also supported the Sangkum government’s domestic state-building agenda with regard to centre-periphery relations. Postcolonial states have often had problems in extending territorial control beyond the capital city to the outlying territories under their sovereignty (Roy, 2007: 26; Slater, 2010: 36). In this sense, the redrawing of territorial space and the creation of territorial identity for Preah Vihear Temple allowed Sihanouk’s government to increase state presence and power in the country’s remote and porous border region, as the area became drawn into the more organized hierarchical power relations of a state administered space. The temple, its surrounding areas, and the sparsely scattered indigenous minority populations were no longer separate, isolated, local entities but were now closely related spatially and administratively to the Phnom Penh government.

Moreover, the creation of territorial identity for Preah Vihear Temple had significant nationalist dimensions for Prince Sihanouk’s politics of postcolonial nation-building. The construction of territorial space has a role in the imagining and reinforcing of the ‘politics of community, solidarity [and] identity’ (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992: 9). Cambodian people living in Phnom Penh and in other provinces could in a way imagine their shared sense of belonging to the Cambodian nation through the belief that they had spatial and territorial connections with Preah Vihear Temple. This was a valuable political resource that Sihanouk could capitalize on for his mass mobilization politics, rallying people to participate in political actions with the just cause of protecting a specific territorial space in the motherland.

An important mechanism connecting the construction of territorial space to the national imagining of community has been the modern geographical map, which can represent the nation visually as having a potent geo-body (see Thongchai, 1994). In Thongchai’s terms, when people look at the map of Cambodia, they see not only the geo-body of Cambodia (that is, its territory and related values and practices) but also the specific geo-body of Preah Vihear province (Figure 2). Since the map is used for many different purposes and in many different places, it has familiarized Cambodian people with both the name and geo-body of Preah Vihear province. If Preah Vihear were only the name of the border temple, people would forget it since Cambodia has hundreds of ancient temples. Therefore, by creating a new province named after the temple, the Cambodian state tried to make sure that henceforth the name of Preah Vihear would be used repeatedly and widely and its geo-body would be tightly bound within the geo-body of the Cambodian nation. Thus, Cambodia henceforth cannot afford to relinquish the temple back to Thailand. Its place is firmly fixed in the national imagining of a Cambodian national community.

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Figure 2.

Preah Vihear province, Cambodia.

Conclusion

The formal transfer of power from French colonial master to Cambodian hands on 9 November 1953 was deeply symbolic for Prince Sihanouk and Cambodia. There was great hope for the future following independence and the establishment of national sovereignty. The term kor sang cheat (nation-building) became a new, widely-used expression of what Sihanouk’s government aspired to achieve for the country. This included national development, modernization, and progress in all sectors. However, Sihanouk was soon faced with constraints and challenges to both his political leadership and nation-building efforts, including a lack of sufficient state revenue and other material, human, and technological resources. Political fragmentation and rivalry among political elites placed increasing pressure on the newly independent country. His government’s relations with Thailand and South Vietnam were also deteriorating, while his adopted foreign policy of neutrality and non-alignment was being undermined by Cold War tensions.

Against the backdrop of these constraints, Sihanouk turned to nationalism as a political resource for his postcolonial nation-building project. His Sangkum government invested heavily in the cultural politics of representing the nation. Old primordial cultural markers, practices, and traditions were co-opted, identified with, and attached to new modern nation-state meanings. Through this cultural politics of representing the nation, Sihanouk managed to conjure up an image of himself as a strong patron and guardian of Khmer culture and traditions, an important source of political power and authority. The cultural politics also allowed him to compare his Sangkum regime to Angkor, articulating the former as having achieved a similar level of progress and glory as the latter. In this sense, his government’s nation-building mission was projected as having been proudly accomplished, the nation restored once more to its former pride and glory under Sihanouk’s leadership.

Embedded in Sihanouk’s broader politics of cultural nationalism, Preah Vihear emerged from being an obscure border temple complex to representing the Cambodian nation. The Sangkum government invested in many projects aimed at transforming the temple from a site of cultural and religious worship to a dynamic and omnipresent symbol of the Cambodian state and nation. It constructed the temple as symbolic not only of Khmer cultural heritage, but also of national identity, unity, solidarity, security, and pride, all of which were important ingredients in Sihanouk’s postcolonial politics of nation-building.