Society, Economics, and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th-8th Centuries.

• Author: AUNG-THWIN, MICHAEL
• Position: Review

Society, Economics, and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th-8th Centuries. MICHAEL VICKERY. Tokyo: THE TOYO BUNKO 1998. Pp. 486, 5 maps, 4 plates, 3 tables, bibliography. [yen]5000.

Among the handful of Western-trained historians conducting research on pre-classical and classical mainland Southeast Asia, fewer still work on the great kingdom of Angkor using only (or mainly) primary (i.e., original) sources: the Sanskrit and Khmer stone inscriptions. Michael Vickery is the only historian trained in the U.S. that I know of who is currently reconstructing Angkor in this way. [1] Although his dissertation on the post-Angkor period was written in 1977--and based on the chronicles--he seems to have shifted his research focus in the past two decades, increasingly working on the pre-Angkor (and I suspect, in future years, the Angkor) period using only (or mainly) the epigraphic material. And none too soon, for since L. P. Briggs' and G. Coedes' works on Angkor in the late fifties and early sixties, respectively, there have been only a few (only two scholarly monographs in English) on aspects of Angkorean state and society: Mabbett's and Chandler's The Khmers and Eleanor Mannikka's Angkor Wat. E ven then, Vickery appears to be the only one amongst them who has used the original inscriptions--a qualification that is far more important than most would suspect, for a single word can mislead a whole generation of scholarship, as was the case in the study of Pagan.

The particular book under review focuses on Cambodia of the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. It has eight chapters (including the introduction), a very detailed and scholarly appendix, a large bibliography (however, not including Eleanor Mannikka's work), a helpful index to the book, and another index of inscription numbers. The longish introduction sets out Vickery's philosophical (and academic) stance; he discusses several conceptual issues, particularly the Asiatic Mode of Production (abbreviated in the work as AMP) and Cambodia's place in it. (This is also the chapter where, in the Usual Vickery Mode [UVM], he takes pot-shots at other views and people, but thank goodness, confined mainly to the footnotes.) The second chapter deals with the historiography of pre-Angkor Cambodia; Vickery here reviews its literature, agreeing or disagreeing with the various theories and conclusions. The third chapter discusses the pre- and proto-historic background, the scholarly literature on it and...