Rewriting National History: Examining the History of Cambodia Written under the People’s Republic of Kampuchea Regime

This article examines how the People’s Republic of Kampuchea regime (PRK, 1979–89) attempted to design a new history of Cambodia. In particular, it focuses on the following points: the rehabilitation of the country’s historical pride, problems stemming from remembering its traumatic past, national unity under the civil war, transition to historiography based on materialism, and censorship by Vietnamese advisors. Rewriting of national history under the PRK regime commenced from the rehabilitation of historical pride and historicization of the Pol Pot regime’s genocide as a traumatic memory through history textbooks and cultural policies. The comprehensive history based on materialism had not been written until the mid-1980s, and it was done under censorship by Vietnamese advisors. The authors should change the previous historiography. The new history had the same essence as the previous one: the history of Cambodia glorified the Angkor period and lamented the decline of the post-Angkor period. However, the Angkor period was not only praised for its prosperity and national unity but also criticized for its feudalistic nature. The history of struggle was divided in two stages: the struggles against feudalism and imperialism, and those against the Pol Pot–Ieng Sary clique. The former is similar to the historiography of other socialist countries, and the latter is typical in Cambodia. This historiography showed thelegitimacy of the undergoing civil war, particularly in terms of modern history. To avoid political division among people, the responsibility for suffering was imposed only on a few political leaders. In particular, the responsibility of genocide under the Pol Pot regime was imposed only on three leaders: Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan. It placed all other people as victims of the Pol Pot regime, whose historical view would be kept even if there were some historiographical change under the next Cambodian regime