vitself to the patronage of Vietnam. The problem became less crucial in the
late 1990s, when Cambodia and Vietnam joined Thailand in the Associa-
tion of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Another theme, really a twentieth-century one, has to do with the rela-
tionship of present-day Cambodians to the past. The history of Angkor,
after all, was deciphered, restored, and bequeathed to them by their colo-
nial masters. Why had so many forgotten it? What did it mean to have
the memories and the grandeur brought back to life, in times of terror
and dependence? And in what ways are the post-Angkorean years and
the colonial era connected to these earlier periods?

A third theme arises from the pervasiveness of patronage and hierar-
chical terminology in Cambodian thinking, politics, and social relations.
For most of Cambodian history, it seems, people in power were thought
(by themselves and nearly everyone else) to be more meritorious than
other people. Despite some alterations, this belief remained essentially
unchanged between Cambodia's Indianized phase and the onset of Ther-
avada Buddhism.³ The widespread acceptance of the status quo meant
that in Marxist terms, Cambodians went through centuries of mystifica-
tion. If this is so, and one's identity was so frequently related to subordi-
nation, what did "independence" mean?

A final theme, related to the third, springs from the inertia that seems
to be characteristic of rural society. Until very recently, alternatives to
subsistence agriculture and incremental social improvements of any kind
were rarely avafiable available to most Cambodians and were in any case rarely
sought, as the outcome could be punishment or starvation. In the mean-
time, crops had to be harvested and families raised as they had been har-
vested and raised before. The way things had always been done, in the
village and the palace, was also seen as the way things should be done.
Clearly, this attitude suited elite interests and kept the rest of society "in
line"; but perhaps because mystification was so widespread, the process
may well have been less cynical than we might wish to think. Through-
out Cambodian history, in any case, government (or rajakar, literally
"royal work") was the privilege enjoyed by people freed in some way
from the obligation of growing their own food. The governed grew food
for them in exchange for their protection.

This conservative cast of mind, perceptible at so many stages of Cam-
bodian history, has led some writers to suggest that Cambodia and its
people were "unchanging" and "asleep." This myth of changelessness, on
occasion, suited the French administration, as it implied docility; for later
observers, there has been something "un-Cambodian" about revolution-
ary efforts, however misguided and inept, to break into a new kind of life.

bThe notion of changelessness is a myth or at least an oversimplification
of events, but it has persisted for too long among students of Cambodian

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