A History of Cambodia

Due to our growing interest in Angkor, we felt it was necessary to read a "national" history to understand the larger trajectory of the Khmer people before, during, and after Angkor. David Chandler's A History of Cambodia is still the standard reference in English, so we began there. And Chandler, to his credit, does an excellent job synthesizing various sources on prehistoric, ancient, Angkorean, post-Angkor, colonial, and post-colonial Cambodia. It's a daunting task, particularly since much of the source material has severe limitations or it has not survived at all. Chandler endeavored to do  justice to this bewildering task of covering more than 2000 years of history well. In terms of Angkor and its decline, he is cautious and seems to agree with Vickery's interpretation of the problematic royal chronicles that cover the 15th and 16th centuries. Nonetheless, Angkor was still visited and used by monks and the Cambodian royal family. To what extent there really are so many parallels between different periods in Cambodian history is another question we cannot resolve. Chandler, for his part, sees them frequently in terms of Cambodia's destiny as a weaker power in the sphere of influence of Siam and Vietnam in the 1600s-1800s, as well as periods under colonial French Indochina or the Vietnam War that engulfed the region. After reading this history, which is largely critical of the state of affairs in Cambodia's political class (repression, arbitrary rule, incompetence, genocide/crimes against humanity, especially in the DK years under Pol Pot), one wonders to what extent the characterization of relations between the Cambodian state and its population was like this before the capital shifted south to Phnom Penh. Was Angkor really a centralized state which supported intensive agriculture, irrigation projects, and infrastructure while Cambodia afterwards was more commercial-oriented and the state unwilling or unable to fund similar projects of the Angkor period?