Piglets and sloganeering in Kompong Speu
Another new post from another new author. As the Democratic Kampuchea side of things is already well covered here, I’m hoping to add some information on the margins – the political context, the Sangkum, what came before and what developed afterwards, in an effort to look at the forces in opposition to which Democratic Kampuchea took shape; first, one of the stranger social connections of Saloth Sar.
The role of traditional elites, as opposed to a mercantile class or the bourgeoisie – in Cambodia’s case, princes and monks – in the development of a nation’s political consciousness is a complex one: in Indochina, such figures were not only present at the outset, but often played a part in events for many years. In Cambodia, the formation of the Democratic Party under Prince Sisowath Yuthevong, a member of the same Parti Communiste that was later to influence Saloth Sar and his Paris associates, is a case in point, as was its subsequent drift leftwards under another princely secretary-general. The more strident brand of middle-class nationalism represented by Son Ngoc Thanh was marginalised, and even repressed, for some time under a variety of traditionally paternalistic interpretations of politics. However, even the royal family could throw up its own political outcasts, of a sort, perhaps the most interesting and dynamic of whom was Norodom Chantarangsey.
Chantarangsey (or Chantaraingsey, Chantarangsy or Chantarangsei, depending on your preferred transliteration) was a descendant of King Norodom through Prince Chantalekha, and therefore well-connected in Cambodian terms. In the period before independence he was associated with Son Ngoc Thanh, and like Thanh chose to collaborate with the Japanese occupiers in the hope of ridding the country of the French: while Thanh spent much of the war in Tokyo masquerading as a Burmese army captain called Chayo (“Captain Hurrah”), Chantarangsey joined the “Greenshirts” militia set up under the Japanese authorities and rapidly developed a taste for military life. At the war’s end he absconded to Thailand and linked up with Poc Khun and other independence-minded Khmers who the Thai government were happy to support, possibly in the hope of destabilising the border provinces. Over the next few years Chantarangsey developed into what Kiernan called a “comprador warlord”, controlling a large and (by Issarak standards) fairly organised group of guerrillas occupying large areas of rural Kompong Speu in a partial accommodation with the French, though also carrying out a half-flirtation with Thanh and Issarak umbrella group the KNLC.
At this stage, Chantarangsey was still viewed in some quarters as a potential channel for modernising, and even socialist, ideas. Saloth Chhay, the older brother of Sar, maintained contacts with him and recommended him to his younger brother. According to Ros Chantrabot, Chantarangsey was cultivated by a Viet Minh commissar, Nguyen Thanh Sonh, who attempted to introduce him both to marxist-leninist thought and Ho Chi Minh’s vision of an Indochinese federation; Sonh seems to have viewed Chantarangsey as a Cambodian version of the Laotian ‘Red Prince’, Souphanouvong. While it’s interesting to imagine what might have happened if the Khmer revolution had proceeded, under Viet Minh direction, in the relatively gradualist manner seen in Laos, this reckoned without Sihanouk, Lon Nol and Chantarangsey himself, who was enough of a pure nationalist to back away from Vietnamese help. After Geneva, Sonh suggested that Chantarangsey join the ‘regroupees’ working on the Cambodian revolution from outside the borders, but he refused. So, while Son Ngoc Minh’s United Issarak Front associates boarded a Polish ship taking them into exile in Hanoi, Chantarangsey returned to Cambodia and threw in his lot with his relative Sihanouk’s new government.
Sihanouk was all too happy to coopt the former Issaraks when it suited him, including Chantarangsey’s old KNLC colleague “Dap” Chhuon, a murderous warlord who claimed to be protected against bullets and sharp objects thanks to his possession of two venerated statues. Resisters who failed to lay down their arms were another matter; Chuuon managed to finally ambush and execute his old rival Kao Tak, while Son Ngoc Thanh’s tiny band of nationalist gunmen was vilified in Sihanouk’s propaganda as the instrument of hostile foreign powers, and pursued mercilessly. Even Chantarangsey found himself rapidly accused of lese-majeste and sent to prison for three years, where (if Chandler’s sources are correct) he passed his time writing romantic novels. Eventually released, the former Issarak reinvented himself as a businessman, making a healthy profit after Sihanouk made him head, under a pseudonym, of the casino that opened in the late 1960s to cater to a growing gambling obssession. He was also rumoured, after funding a school, to have helped the younger brother of his old acquaintance Saloth Chhay into his first teaching post.
It was Lon Nol, however, who was to thrust Chantarangsey back into a form of political life, after the 1970 coup. Engaging him as the commander of a new 13th brigade of the FANK, which Chantarangsey proceeded to raise amongst his old Issarak supporters and their sons, the Marshal sent Chantarangsey – soon promoted to General – to ‘pacify’ his old fief of Kompong Speu. This he proceeded to do with such apparent effectiveness that his military administration rapidly developed into its own statelet, run in the personalist fashion depressingly familiar to students of the period, but with a Sihanoukesque flair. Chantarangsey gained a certain prominence in the reports of foreign correspondents during the Civil War: this was, in part, as he shared Sihanouk’s gift for the theatrical side of publicity, for grand gestures, and for sloganeering. Sydney Schanberg, in an article published in the New York Times on Christmas Day 1972, reported that Chantarangsey arranged tours for foreign representatives that were “models of public-relations expertise”, featuring a jeep-escorted journey from the capital, elephant rides, welcome speeches by the General himself, an official brigade photographer, and generally a long and alcohol-lubricated lunch – it was doubtless at one of these slightly surreal events that the journalist James Fenton gained the material for his poem “Dead Soldiers”. However, Chantarangsey clearly remembered enough from Sonh’s Viet Minh education sessions, at least in matters of publicity, to intertwine military organisation and populist politics in a way uncommon elsewhere in the Republic. Earlier in 1972 the NYT had reported him railing against “all those people in Phnom Penh who play at politics”, while by the time of Schanberg’s visit, he was able to report that the 13th Brigade had through its labour programmes built 16 clinics, a hospital, roads, reservoirs, and community centres, prominently featuring signs stating “Donation to the economic life from the 13th Brigade to the people”. Chantarangsey had also distributed 1,300 piglets – “I got a pig from the Mister. I am happy now”, commented a rice farmer. Somewhat less charitable treatment of refugees was hinted at by James Fenton, relayed to him by Saloth Chhay, now acting as the General’s aide.
The General was accused of padding his payroll, much as other FANK officers did, to finance his programmes. But he was also stated to have sold his own property to ensure that his men were actually paid properly – a relative rarity in the Republic’s army. While he went about unarmed to inspire ‘confidence’ – Communist forces in the area staying quiet nearby – he made sure that his own brigade was properly armed, partly by buying up weapons from other less paternalistic officers. Eventually he became too strong for Lon Nol to control, matters having come full circle in Kompong Speu.
It was an odd end for someone once put forward as Cambodia’s Souphanouvong, but the careers of such marginal figures are an interesting illustration of the context in which Cambodian politics developed, and how the activity of the traditional elites could impact on them. Unlike most other Republic officials, Chantarangsey did not escape the country, or surrender, when Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, but decided to continue the war. Disappearing into the Cardamoms, parts of his 13th Brigade were still causing trouble for the RAK in 1977. Chantarangsey himself may have been killed in an ambush somewhere along Route 4 early in 1976, but a large number of other accounts exist, appropriately enough for a figure whom the credulous peasantry believed to have supernatural powers.
No film, yet, though I’m sure some is out there somewhere.

The offer to contribute to this blog dedicated to the history of Khmer Communism and the culmination of some of its tendencies in the state of Democratic Kampuchea, came to me unexpectedly, but it is probably something that I almost readily agreed upon, due to feelings of competence to do so. Democratic Kampuchea has occupied my thoughts and fascinated me since the very time I read a short biographical note in a Soviet encyclopedia which stated that “Pol Pot – leader of a levacky (which is a variation of the Russian word for “left” but with a vulgar undertone) group called the Red Khmers, as well as with old news shots showing a pile of human skulls collected inside a building ruined by war.












