Free When the War Was Over by Elizabeth Becker Page A

declare was national pride. Led by the royal family, the country revolted. The rebellion became known as the Uprising of 1885 and spread throughout the country, lasting two years. Peasants took up arms against the French in the name of the monarchy, if not Norodom. They were often led in battle by a member of the royal family or of one of the elite families of Phnom Penh. Prince Si Votha, a half-brother and rival of Norodom, was the chief sponsor, and he was at once a help to Norodom in frightening the French and a threat in acting as if he might be the more legitimate candidate for the throne.
    The leaders of the revolt were fighting to prevent French control of their court. But the peasants following them had more at stake. If the French gained more control it would mean higher taxes and the introduction of private property to Cambodia, thus ending the feudal but beneficent royal dispensing of land. The French wanted to impose a “rational” system whereby land would be held privately for the first time, by the French, the Vietnamese
immigrating from Cochin China, and the ambitious Sino-Khmers and aristocratic Khmers who would turn the peasants into indentured laborers. Under the royal system, they controlled the land they tilled as long as they kept it in agricultural use.
    Norodom stayed out of the fray, watching and hoping for a quick French surrender that did not come. Finally in August of 1886 he concluded he had to act, to outflank the increasingly popular Si Votha, who might claim the throne. However, Norodom appeared to harbor a naive belief that the French would be grateful for his action and rescind their intolerable demands.
    He issued a proclamation claiming the French had returned to him a large measure of control over the kingdom, a vast overstatement of the truth, and then he personally set out to provinces with his own royal guard to persuade the people to drop their arms and bring an end to the rebellion. This was a case of double deception by a Khmer leader, not the first or last time it would occur and succeed in the short run. The French had deceived Norodom into believing what he wanted to believe, and he had deceived the people, promising them far more than he could deliver.
    The people accepted their king’s word. There were other scattered if impassioned protests against the more brutal aspects of French colonial life over the next fifty years, but no more national uprisings. The king had been bought off. In exchange for retaining the throne Norodom allowed France to rule its Cambodian protectorate more or less as it wished.
    The episode was emblematic of Cambodia’s affairs with the outside world in the modern era. A foreign power, France in this case, provided protection from more dangerous powers, Vietnam and Siam, and then betrayed Cambodia by demanding control over the country. The people resisted but were reined in by a leader who had given in to the foreign power. And as would happen again in the future the leader did his utmost to ensure that the Cambodians most responsible for trying to free the country from outright domination were removed from politics and from competing against him. Cambodia emerged weaker, with fewer leaders, and under firmer control of a foreign power.
    The French understood the lesson of the uprising with cynical clarity. They left the king on the throne and convened a native council to hide their complete control of the country. The revolts had saved the monarchy—the French realized they could not dispense with this Oriental despot and his court. Perhaps the revolt saved the possibility that Cambodia could be constructed as a modern nation itself, for there were French in Cochin China
who were arguing that Cambodia should be annexed to Cochin China (the southern area of Vietnam; Annam was the central area, Tonkin the northern).
    All real power in Cambodia passed to the French, and everything the peasants had feared came to pass. Taxes were