Routledge | 2006 | ISBN 0415355621 | PDF | 294 pages | 10.6 MB
At
the same time a biography and a history of how Cambodia became
colonized by the French in the nineteenth century, Cambodia's Bad
Frenchmen offers a captivating account of a little-known period of
colonial history. Drawing on new materials from French, Vietnamese and
Cambodian archives, it reconstructs a time during which France
struggled to give meaning and
substance to its Protectorate over Cambodia. The book focuses on those
sitting on the boundaries between the worlds of the colonizers and the
colonized: indigenous interpreters, go-betweens, concubines and their mA©tis children, and marginal Europeans who failed to fashion
a proper colonial existence - mauvais colonists - notably Thomas
Caraman. They all constituted a challenge to the colonial enterprise by
muddling its social, cultural and racial boundaries. In its
consideration of the critical role played by these groups, this book
shifts away from governor-generals, grand discourses and the simple
view of colonialism as
"colonizers" versus "colonized," to explore how things actually worked
themselves out on the ground. It examines in particular the "civilizing
mission" and educational initiatives; the slow destruction of the
indigenous justice system; the policing of sexual relations between
colonizers and colonized; the theft of Cambodian land and taxes by the
colonizing power; and the brutal repression of resistance wherever and
whenever it appeared. Overall, Cambodia's Bad Frenchmen reveals the
crucial role played by indigenous middlemen and marginal Europeans in
therise of the colonial state, and tells the fascinating tale of a
Frenchman who came to represent everything that the colonial state
dreaded.
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