Cambodia Gains Independence and Survives Wars

After World War II, Vietnam’s neighbor Cambodia pressured France to grant it independence in 1953. Cambodia’s royal family continued to head the government and tried to maintain its status as a non-aligned nation during the first two decades of the Cold War. However, Cambodia was eventually drawn into the Vietnam War.

Following the Vietnam War, a communist guerrilla organization called the Khmer Rouge, under the leadership of Pol Pot, overthrew the right-wing government of Cambodia. Once in power, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge imposed a ruthless form of communism, following the Chinese model of “cultural revolution” that targeted intellectuals and dissenters. The slaughter and famine that followed took more than two million lives—about one-quarter of the country’s population. Mass graves of victims from the “killing fields” of Cambodia continued to be discovered in the countryside and jungles for decades afterward. (Connect: Create a graphic organizer comparing the tactics of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot with that of Joseph Stalin. See Topic 7.4.)

In 1977, Vietnamese troops invaded Cambodia to support opponents of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. At the end of the ensuing war, the Vietnamese took control of the government in Cambodia and helped the country to regain some stability, even as some fighting continued and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled the country. In 1989, Vietnamese forces completed their withdrawal from Cambodia. A peace agreement reached in 1991 allowed free elections, monitored by the United Nations. Prince Norodom Sihanouk became a constitutional monarch, and the country developed a democratic government with multiple political parties and aspects of a market economy.