Cambodia, also known as Kampuchea, is located in mainland Southeast Asia between Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and the Gulf of Thailand. From the 9th to the 15th century, the mighty \TKhmer Empire\t extended its sway far beyond the country's present boundaries. This period produced the glorious temple complex and royal palace that now lie crumbling at \TAngkor\t. The Khmer kingdom gradually declined; it accepted French protection in 1863 and was later incorporated into French \TIndochina\t. Cambodia was granted independence by France in 1953, but it was soon entangled in the \TVietnam War\t. In April 1975, Cambodian Communists known as the \TKhmer Rouge\t took control of the country, instituting radical agrarian and xenophobic policies that led to the deaths of at least 1,000,000 people. The Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979 by the Vietnamese army and Cambodian exiles. The Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea (renamed State of Cambodia in 1989) was opposed by the Chinese-backed Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea in exile (renamed the National Government of Cambodia in 1990), made up of the Khmer Rouge and two non-Communist factions. factions. Under terms of a 1991 peace accord, the two formed a coalition interim government pending new elections. LAND AND RESOURCES Most of the country is low-lying and heavily forested; only a small portion (11%) of the land is cultivated. The Dangrek Mountains provide a watershed escarpment boundary with Thailand in the north. The Cardamom Range dominates the southwest, rising to 1,771 m (5,810 ft) at Phnom Aral, the highest point in the country. Adjacent to the coast is the Elephant Range, and highlands adjoin Laos and Vietnam east of the Mekong River in the northern part of the country. Soils Two types of soil predominate in Cambodia: alluvium deposited by riverine flooding and soil resulting from rock decay. The former is fertile and supports rice production; the latter is mostly forested and has limited agricultural potential. Climate Monsoon rains prevail from mid-April to October, followed by drier and cooler air until March. Average annual rainfall in the central lowlands is 1,400 mm (55 in) and may be three or more times greater in the southwestern mountains. Temperatures range from 20 deg to 36 deg C (68 deg to 97 deg F). Drainage The \TMekong River\t bisects and irrigates the eastern lowlands of Cambodia. Close to the center of the country is the largest lake in Southeast Asia, the Tonle Sap ("great lake"), which acts as a natural reservoir for the Mekong. Only a few of Cambodia's rivers, in the southwest, lie outside the drainage system of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap. Vegetation and Animal Life Dense tropical rain forests cover the uplands, while mangroves predominate along the coast. The natural vegetation of the central plains is prairie grass. Larger species of wildlife, including buffalo, elephants, rhinoceroses, bears, tigers, and panthers, are found at higher elevations. Exotic birds and reptiles are common. Resources Hardwood forests have long been exploited for timber. Phosphate, salt, and gems (rubies, sapphires, and zircons) have been exported, and there are iron ore deposits. The Mekong has great hydroelectric and irrigation potential. PEOPLE Cambodia's population is unusually homogenous, with the \TKhmer\t constituting more than 85%. The Khmer are thought to have migrated from southern China prior to 200 BC. The chief minority groups are the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Almost all of the Vietnamese in Cambodia were driven out or killed under Khmer Rouge rule, but many of the several hundred thousand Vietnamese who later settled there remained after Vietnam's 1989 military withdrawal. In 1991 more than 400,000 Cambodians were refugees within Cambodia or in Thailand. It is unclear how various upland minorities, such as the Cham-Malays and Khmer Loeus, fared under the Khmer Rouge. Theravada Buddhism has been the religion of almost all Khmer since the 13th century, when it replaced animism and ancestor worship among the peasants and Brahmanic beliefs at the royal court. The Khmer Rouge banned all religions, disrobed and punished thousands of monks, and desecrated hundreds of temples and monasteries. Buddhism, legally practiced since 1979, again became the official religion in 1989. Monasteries are being restored with government support. Cambodia is overwhelmingly agricultural and rural. The largest cities are \TPhnom Penh\t, the capital, \TBattambang\t, and Kompong Cham. The Khmer Rouge evacuated the refugee-swollen cities and towns in 1975 with great loss of life. Massive population shifts again took place after 1979 as the new government allowed people to rejoin their families and return home. The population of Phnom Penh (1975 est., 3,000,000) increased from less than 200,000 in 1979 to 750,000 in 1984. Formal education was abandoned during the Khmer Rouge period in favor of basic task training and political indoctrination in agricultural communes. After 1979, with Vietnamese assistance, public schools were reopened and adult literacy courses were widely promoted. Health care was very limited under French rule, and many physicians did not survive the Khmer Rouge revolution. Hospitals in the major towns have since been reopened. The greatest monuments of Khmer culture are the ruins of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, which were inspired by a Hinduized worldview and indigenous sculptural idioms. After 1979, some of Cambodia's lesser architectural monuments and temples were restored, and the government organized classical and folk-dance performance, song troupes, and shadow plays. ECONOMY Cambodia's myriad small plots, primitively cultivated once a year, traditionally produced an exportable surplus of rice. During the Vietnam War, dikes were destroyed and rubber plantations and processing plants were crippled by military damage; corn, groundnut, sugar, and livestock production also suffered. A large refugee population became dependent on imported rice. The Khmer Rouge, who emphasized economic self-sufficiency, abolished money and personal property and forcibly collectivized agriculture. By 1978, renewed civil war caused further economic disruption. After the Khmer Rouge were driven out in 1979, a massive international relief effort provided Cambodia with food and other aid. The Vietnamese backed government abandoned its efforts to collectivize agriculture in 1989, and much small enterprise is in private hands. Fish harvesting has increased dramatically, although the country is still not self-sufficient in rice. Manufacturing facilities are also being rehabilitated. The surviving industries process agricultural and forest products and produce consumer goods. Transportation lines are slowly being restored. The road from Phnom Penh to Kompong Som is a vital link in the economy. Under the Khmer Rouge, foreign trade was almost nonexistent. The Vietnamese-backed government depended almost exclusively on economic aid from Vietnam, the \TUSSR\t, and its allies, but this aid declined after the breakup of communism in Eastern Europe. Khmer Rouge attacks on economic targets further hampered recovery, driving tens of thousands of people from their homes by mid-1990. GOVERNMENT On Jan. 8, 1979, Vietnamese-backed opponents of the Khmer Rouge established the People's Republic of Kampuchea, headed by a People's Revolutionary Council. In 1981 the newly elected National Assembly ratified a constitution providing for a council of state and a council of ministers. The Kampuchean People's Revolutionary party was the sole political party. The coalition government in exile formed in 1982 was headed by \TNorodom Sihanouk\t as president; Khieu Samphan (Khmer Rouge) was vice-president; and Son Sann was prime minister. The armed forces of these leaders operated independently. On Oct. 23, 1991, the government in Phnom Penh and the three rebel factions signed a peace accord. Sihanouk became chairman of the Supreme National Council, a coalition that was to administer the country with the United Nations until elections based on proportional representation could be held. Legislative seats were to be allocated by province based on the percentage of votes received by each faction. In November Sihanouk was named president of an interim coalition that excluded the Khmer Rouge. HISTORY Five significant periods can be discerned in the history of Cambodia. From the 1st century AD, the kingdoms of Funan organized life in support of royal courts that adopted the Indian Brahmanic cult of the god-king; Indic culture spread into the legal code and an alphabet. During the 6th and 7th centuries, kingdoms of Khmer origin known as Chenla kept the institutions of Funan while conquering neighboring kingdoms in present-day Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand. Chenla was succeeded by the classical (Angkor) period of Khmer history, which lasted from the 9th to the mid-15th century. During this period, Cambodian artistic, architectural, and military achievements reached their zenith. A gradual decline in the coercive authority of the Khmer Empire was followed by losses of territory to the Vietnamese and the Thais. The French protectorate began by treaty in 1863 and became a colonial relationship with Cambodia's incorporation into the Union of Indochina in 1887. Indochina fell to the Japanese during World War II, bur France reclaimed it in 1945 as part of the newly conceived \TFrench Union\t. King Norodom Sihanouk (installed by France in 1941) was pressed by new nationalist parties to gain full independence (granted 1953). After independence, opposition groups continued to demand further political and social reforms, although the Cambodian offshoot of Ho Chi Minh's Indochina Communist party withdrew its cadres to North Vietnam in 1954 following the Geneva cease-fire agreements for Indochina. Sihanouk gave up the throne to his father in 1955, but he remained a prince, premier, leader of the dominant political movement (the Sangkum), and, after 1960, elected head of state. He tried to minimize the risk of involvement in the Vietnam conflict by rejecting membership in the \TSoutheast Asia Treaty Organization\t (\TSEATO\t), accepting military aid from China, breaking relations with South Vietnam and the United States, and allowing the North Vietnamese use of his seaport to support their forces fighting in South Vietnam. A new Communist group under Soloth Sar (\TPol Pot\t) sprouted secretly in 1960. This group, later named the Communist party of Cambodia (Khmer Rouge), moved away from their North Vietnamese mentors, launching an armed struggle to topple the government in 1968. The United States began secretly bombing North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia in 1969, and in April 1970, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces launched a limited incursion to wipe them out. By this time Sihanouk had been overthrown by one of his top generals, \TLon Nol\t. The new Khmer Republic's government became increasingly authoritarian and corrupt, and it fought a losing battle against the North Vietnamese on its territory and the Khmer Rouge guerrilla forces. The Paris Peace Accords for Vietnam in January 1973 failed to halt the fighting in Cambodia, and in April 1975 the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh. Without hesitation they drove the entire urban population out among the poor peasants of the countryside, in whose name a revolutionary leveling was to take place. For the next three and a half years the population was conscripted into agricultural communes by zonal and local Khmer Rouge commanders, referred to only as Angkar ("Organization"). A few light industries were maintained in the otherwise empty cities and towns. Hundreds of thousands of people died of exhaustion, malnutrition, revolutionary and disciplinary executions, and paranoid purges within the movement itself. Conservative estimates have put the toll at about 1,000,000 persons; it may have been much higher. The Khmer Rouge almost totally isolated Cambodia from the outside world. China was its chief ally. In January 1979, following violent disputes with Vietnam over boundaries and revolutionary leadership, Phnom Penh was overrun by the Vietnamese army. Khmer Rouge defectors headed by \THeng Samrin\t established a Vietnamese-style people's republic backed by the authority of up to 180,000 Vietnamese troops and myriad advisors. The Khmer Rouge forces staggered to the western boundary with Thailand, where the United Nations eventually organized camps for further waves of Cambodians variously seeking food, haven, or resettlement. The Khmer Rouge launched guerrilla resistance with arms supplied by the Chinese. In 1982, Prince Sihanouk and Son Sann formed a coalition government with the Khmer Rouge. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (\TASEAN\t) helped to arm this more acceptable resistance group and insisted upon Vietnam's exit from Cambodia. Opposition to the growing Soviet and Vietnamese influence in Southeast Asia was also reflected in the inability of the Vietnamese-backed government to gain Cambodia's seat in the United Nations. The Vietnamese, with Soviet backing, alternately tested out diplomatic compromises and military assaults on the camps and bases along the Thai border. In 1985, Pol Pot's retirement as head of the Khmer Rouge was announced, although he retained a military advisory role. In May 1989 constitutional revisions restored the right to private property and reinstated Buddhism as the official religion. The Vietnamese withdrew almost all of their forces from Cambodia by September 1989 despite the collapse of multinational peace talks on the future of the country. In July 1990, as the Khmer Rouge intensified their guerrilla war, the United States withdrew diplomatic recognition from the government in exile, although it continued to aid the non-Communist factions until 1991. China also agreed to stop aiding the Khmer Rouge. The United Nations Security Council drew up a comprehensive peace plan in 1990. In June 1991 the four factions declared a cease-fire. Under the peace accord signed on Oct. 23, 1991, Sihanouk became head of an interim coalition government. The United Nations was to control several ministries, oversee the cease-fire, disarm and demobilize 70% of the combatants, and organize democratic elections (tentatively scheduled for 1993). MacAlister Brown Bibliography: Barron, John, and Paul, Anthony, Murder of a Gentle Land (1977); Becker, E., When the War Was Over (1986); Chanda, N., Brother Enemy (1986); Chandler, D.P., A History of Cambodia (1983); Etheson, C., The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea (1984); Hildebrand, George, and Porter, Gareth, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution (1976); Jackson, Karl D., ed., Cambodia, 1975-1978: Rendezvous with Death (1989); Kiernan, B., How Pol Pot Came to Power (1985); Kiernan, B., and Boua, C., eds., Peasants and Politics in Kampuchea: 1942-1981 (1982); Ponchaud, Francois, Cambodia, trans. by Nancy Amphoux (1978); Shawcross, W., Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (1980); Vickery, M., Kampuchea (1987); Wright, M., Cambodia (1989).