History of Cambodia

The good, the bad and the ugly is the easiest way to sum up the history of Cambodia. Things were good in the early years, culminating the vast Angkor Empire, unrivalled in the region over three centuries of dominance. From the 13th Century the bad set in as ascendant neighbours steadily chipped away at Cambodian territory. In the 20th century, the late 1950s and early 1960s were Cambodia's golden years, as the economy prospered while neighbouring countries grappled with domestic insurgencies. From 1969 Cambodia was sucked into the Vietnam conflict. The US secretly began carpet-bombing suspected communist base camps in Cambodia and shortly after the 1970 coup, American and South Vietnamese troops invaded the country to root out Vietnamese communist forces. They failed and only pushed Cambodia's communists and their Vietnamese allies deep into Cambodia's interior. It turned downright more ugly, as a brutal civil war culminated in the genocidal rule of the Khmer Rouge between 1975 - 79. Almost two million Cambodians died between during that period. There are stories of endless personal tragedy, of dead brothers, mothers and babies, from which most of Cambodians have never been able to recover. Such suffering takes generations to heal. In 1991 the warring sides met in Paris and signed a peace accord, which enabled UN-administered elections in 1993. A new constitution was drawn up and adopted.