BANGSĀVATĀR: THE EVOLUTION OF HISTORIOGRAPHICAL GENRES IN COLONIAL CAMBODIA

Abstract

This dissertation studies the “interplay” between the bangsāvatār and the colonial historiographical genres in Cambodia during the 1900s and 1950s. It shows how local intellectuals, most of whom were well established in the bangsāvatār tradition, “reacted” to the emergence of colonial scholarship. There were several “types” of local intellectuals who had established themselves either as bangsāvatār scholars or as “modern” intellectuals inspired by the scholarship of French and Thai scholars. The dissertation argues that, the encounter with colonialism and colonial historiography led Cambodia to experience a significant “epistemological transition” between the perceptions of the past of the bangsāvatār narratives and that of the colonial-era history scholarship, which some writers now began to reproduce as “pravattisāstra” (a neologism for “history”). Changes in Cambodia’s national historiography during this period reflected the major epistemological characteristics of the two groups of local intellectuals.