Colonial Cambodia's 'Bad Frenchmen': The rise of French rule and the life of Thomas Caraman, 1840-87 (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia) Review

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Colonial Cambodia's 'Bad Frenchmen': The rise of French rule and the life of Thomas Caraman, 1840-87 (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia) ReviewImagine... A wealthy Western nation decides to "protect" a poor Asian country whose capital is 10,000 kilometers away from its own.
The self-appointed "protector" has no understanding of the language or the culture in the designated protectorate. Likewise, most of the protectorate's people are unfamiliar and uninterested in the distant protector at all. When the protector is unable to control the protectorate through diplomacy it resorts to brute military force, finally forcing its own legal system, government, economy, social order and taxation upon the unsuspecting populace.
The most shocking discovery is learning that the subjugation of this entire country, purportedly done for the most magnanimous reasons, was for the most part based on arrogance, lies and pure greed. The supposed protector's real goal was to exploit the distant land's coveted natural resources that the ignorant natives supposedly weren't worthy (or capable) of managing for themselves.
The tale does not end well for either the protector or the protected.
Sound familiar?
In a 1905 issue of Scribner's magazine George Santayana wrote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Anyone who aspires to contribute to Cambodia's future must read this book. That said, anyone with an interest in history, entrepreneurship, adventure, diplomacy, war and Southeast Asia will love this book.
Welcome to the most fascinating written account of France's 19th century aspirations in colonial Cambodia. Author Gregor Muller's first book accomplishes something extraordinary: it transforms thousands of dusty antique documents from around the world into a living history that meets the most rigid academic standards while gripping readers with a tale that's hard to put down.
Muller's literary technique follows the unusual life of one man who lives, and dies, as part of France's colonial experiment. I was immediately reminded of Barbara Tuchman's historical masterpiece, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, in which she wraps the events of 14th century France around the life of one obscure nobleman.
Meet Thomas Caraman, inept entrepreneur at best...sociopathic liar and financial predator at worst. Is he one of the "Bad Frenchmen" for which the book is named? Perhaps, but not for any reasons that you suspect now. But for all his shortcomings Caraman is our "hero" or at least the biographical subject around whom the author carefully builds his history. The brief 47-year life span of one man thus becomes a riveting tale of seemingly limitless opportunity, ambition, honor, arrogance, brutality, good and evil...that ends in ways no one involved could have suspected.
Caraman's grandiose plans and limitless energy lead him to interact with Emperor Napoleon III of France, King Norodom of Cambodia, and absolutely every type of person from every level of society in between. Muller painstakingly assembled his account from thousands of public and private documents as well as personal meetings with the descendants of Caraman himself. He digs deep into personal correspondence that the original authors never expected to see light of day, especially in the clear context that Muller provides.
Muller worked with many masters of Cambodian history including David Chandler A History of Cambodia, Penny Edwards Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation 1860-1945 (Southeast Asia--Politics, Meaning, Memory) and Milton Osborne Phnom Penh: A Cultural History (Cityscapes). His scholarship is impeccable, supported by more than 50 pages of notes. But I recommend this book because it is a pleasure to read and because these surprising, sometimes shocking, truths are essential to understanding Cambodia's past and future.
NOTE TO THE PUBLISHER - I thank Routledge for bringing this wonderful history to print and understand the economic need for a high cover price. Publishing history is expensive and time consuming with little hope of a return on the investment. I sincerely believe that many more people would enjoy this title and I sincerely hope that a second edition at a lower price can one day be offered.Colonial Cambodia's 'Bad Frenchmen': The rise of French rule and the life of Thomas Caraman, 1840-87 (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia) OverviewColonial Cambodia's "Bad Frenchmen" provides a captivating analysis of the gradual establishment of French colonialism in the late nineteenth century. Drawing on new materials from French, Vietnamese and Cambodian archives, it reconstructs a time during which France struggled to give meaning and substance to its Protectorate over Cambodia. It traces the lives of failed colonists - most notably Thomas Caramen, who all constituted a challenge to the colonial enterprise by muddling its social, cultural and racial boundaries. In its consideration of the critical role played by these colonists, this compelling book shifts away from governor-generals, grand discourses and the simple view of colonialism as ‘colonizers' versus ‘colonized', to explore how things actually worked themselves out on the ground. It examines in particular the 'civilizing mission' and educational initiatives; the slow destruction of the indigenous justice system; the policing of sexual relations between colonisers and colonized; the theft of Cambodian land and taxes by the colonizing power; and the brutal repression of resistance wherever and whenever it appeared.Overall, Muller reveals the crucial role played by indigenous middlemen and marginal Europeans in the rise of the colonial state, and tells the fascinating tale of a Frenchman who came to represent everything that the colonial state dreaded.

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