Norodom Chantarangsey, displaying a startling resemblance to Sihanouk.
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.
{ 8 } Comments
Excellent first post lb, let’s have more of this calibre. Yes, the General was adored by his men, and the Khmer Rouge at a regional Party session did attribute an attack on the Kompong Som oil refinery in 1977 to men belonging to Chantarangsey’s 13th Brigade. This reminds me, I’ll have to find my copy of Corfield’s brief history of the Cambodian non-Communist resistance. It only gives outline of developments, but mentions several groups led by FANK officers who refused to surrender after April 1975. One interesting group which perhaps deserves some more attention, was called the Cobra organisation, who were virtually indistinguishable from the Khmer Rouge apart from snake insignia they wore on their black peasant clothes. They made daring raids into DK, and were heavily armed.
It’s also interesting that you’ve mentioned Dap Chhuon. It was the increasing refusal of people such as this in the Issarak movement, to collaborate with the Vietminh, along with a change of government in Thailand, that by 1949 looked to America for large-scale military and economic aid, which saw the Vietnamese give serious thought to cultivating a Cambodian Communist movement for the first time, filling leadership posts with those Issaraks who had joined the ICP. Coincidently, I’m writing a post on the Comintern-era federation principle and how this was interpreted by the Vietnamese Communists, regarding Laos and Cambodia.
Glad you found it of interest!
…Yes, it does seem that many of the first generation of Issarak leaders were figures belonging almost to the 19th century, with their straggling bands of followers and harshly primitive nationalism. Compared to them the Vietnamese resistance was enormously more sophisticated. Chuuon was a case in point, though he eventually gained enough knowledge of regional geopolitics to declare himself a committed anti-communist, despite once exchanging congratulatory messages with Ho Chi Minh himself. Some of the others such as Achar Yi actually went out of their way to kill ethnic Vietnamese villagers, and all groups would no doubt have been a convenient refuge for deserters and criminals. The ICP would have faced an uphill struggle, in other words.
In this context it isn’t surprising that the Viet Minh tried to court Chantarangsey, who was popular, had some military experience and political awareness, seemed receptive to ‘progressive ideas’ and of course had a claim to the throne. And once Tou Samouth and other monks, or ex-monks, joined the ICP the traditional sources of authority in Cambodia could be used in another way to spread new political concepts, getting around the recruitment issue.
I guess that one of the few figures in DK who really seemed a part of this earlier phase of development was Ta Mok – an effective guerrilla commander who relied on a strong local power base, cultivated a fearsome reputation, and was vocally anti-Vietnamese. By all accounts his understanding of the actual ‘politics’ involved was fairly basic.
For the Vietnamese Communists, how they dealt with Cambodia depended on how best to oppose powerful foreign enemies, firstly the French and the feasibility of Marxist-Leninist revolution in the country, and the latter happening independent of their involvement (i.e. leadership) is something they viewed with pessimism. Despite losing Thai government support by the late 1940s, there was some optimism during the remainder of the Resistance War. The Vietminh had proved that it was possible to successfully engage the French army on a wide front, using mobile guerilla warfare, and the Chinese Communist victory further north gave them confidence too in that they believed the regional struggle was reaching a higher phase, with importance given to organising a wide counter-offensive requiring popular support throughout Indochina to finally kick the French out. The Vietnamese were painfully aware of how the cultivation of a Communist movement in Cambodia was going to be difficult, not only due to the country being seen in orthodox terms as not yet ripe economically and socially, and also given traditional chauvinism and the resentment towards Vietnamese mandarins brought in by the French to occupy the lower levels of the colonial administration, associating them with a disliked government. The Issaraks, although not Communist in the main, were seen as a useful way around this problem, because of their violent opposition to the French. Cambodia gaining independence took much of the meaning away from why they were fighting however, and the going over to the other side by the likes of Chuon saw the Vietnamese seriously thinking about the cultivation of a Cambodian Communist movement, making use of those Issaraks who’d been exposed to socialist ideas and had joined the ICP. But then the politics of separate parties linked to the ICP would be national in character, and their politics would be defined by those respective nationalisms, the consequences of which the Vietnamese would reap years later. Of course the Cambodian Party was formed as the KPRP, designed at first to incorporate elements of all various sections of society, unlike a Bolshevist Communist Party, which focusses on an organised working class membership, which to them, given the Cambodian situation, would be an error given the distinct lack of a working class, apart from a few scattered proles here and there, and again mostly Vietnamese. The new generation of Khmer Communists and the development of the Pol Pot line would later change that of course, and not just the name of the organisation. Their pseudo-Communist Party in power would later attempt to create proles.
Ta Mok is interesting in that this boorish backwater rebel proved to be an almost natural ally of the Pol Potists, with the anti-intellectual, anti-town and poor peasantist tendency they represented. Not to mention his dislike of the Vietnamese. I think it was him who, among others, was supportive of the idea to invade the Khmer Krom area of southern Vietnam, and place it back under Cambodian control. His politics were a little bit ‘basic’, yes, and I believe it was Mok who proved to be persuasive in the CPK meetings over the direction of their planned economy, with Pol agreeing with him on the abolishment of money domestically. He favoured a barter system for the cooperatives, with regions exchanging produce for those things lacking in their own.
However, given his anti-town sentiments, it appears he learnt something in A-Level fashion regarding M-L theory.
“The state is an organism whose purpose is to maintain the power of one class by exercising dictatorship over others in all domains. … But the State is also an instrument that creates a privileged social stratum which, as it develops, becomes cut off from the proletariat and from labour. This has happened, for example, in the Soviet Union … and [to some extent] in [North] Korea and in China. In conformity with Marxist-Leninist principles, it is necessary to … reduce progressively this defect which is the State until it is extinguished completely, giving place to [a system of] self-management of factories by the proletariat and of agriculture by the peasants. The privileged upper stratum will then disappear altogether.
Up to now, the fact we do not use money has greatly reduced private property and thus has promoted the overall trend towards the collective. If we start using money again, it will bring back sentiments of private property and drive the individual away from the collective. Money is an instrument which creates privilege and power. Those who possess it can use it to bribe cadres … [and] to undermine our system. If we allow sentiments of private property to develop, little by little people’s thoughts will turn only to ways of amassing private property … If we take that route, the in one year, or 10 or 20 years, what will become of our Cambodian society which up to now is so clean?”
Mind you, acting as a DK central government hangman, proved to be quite valuable in massing power within the new state, keeping zonal administration in the family.
There’s somewhere on the internet a Khmer pdf with description of Norodom Chantaraingsey activity, featuring another picture of him in the hat. I have it at home and I will post it if you don’t find it, I couldn’t find it right away too.
Ta Mok studied Pali canons for eight years, as his biography states. His father married only at 40, having spent 20 years as a monk. I wonder that it might have influenced him the same way as it influenced Pol Pot. Nuon Chea in his interview posted on Khmerization said that he was always a Buddhist. Very interesting connections. The more you study the more you impressed.
There’s connection between Issaraks and Communists. Many started their way as Issaraks and turned to communism. In relation to posted above Vietnamese had more intelligentsia, they translated Lenin into Vietnamese, as far as I know about Khmer translations- there were none. Maybe it’s the difference in cultures.
Yes, the Issarak connection to the Communists is pretty well entwined. For their insurgency the Khmer Rouge, like lb has noted above with Chantarangsey’s looking up old Issarak pals for his Brigade, would reactivate old sympathies with the Khmer Vietminh among villagers who had been associated with them during the war; those who either didn’t go to Phnom Penh’s side or leave for Hanoi in the 1950s, instead keeping their heads down and going back to normal village life. The DK national flag is that of the original Issarak KNLC; the PRK later used the UIF flag, depicting the Angkor temple with five towers, representing those Khmer Vietminh lead by Son Ngoc Minh, who would become the Hanoi-based titular head of the Cambodian Communist movement.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Y2U990A4
History of Norodom Chantaraingsy in Khmer, with his picture in yound age. On the page 13 is a picture of Dap Chhuon accepting a gift of the arm from Sihanouk. I haven’t read this book myself yet.
Can you posting hun sen picture in khmer rouge uniform during pol pot regim.
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