The secret Nationalist Movement: a memoir of a Cambodian princess: 1880-1920

When I was young at school, in Cambodia, I only learnt the history of Cambodia from books which were written by French clerks during their domination from II August 1863 to 8 November 1953. I did not know the truth until I received the Memoirs of my grandmother and my great grand father from my dearest mother on the day of a very significant event in my life. The documents which recorded Cambodian history of the period of French occupation were written only by the French and portrayed a very benign and distorted history of the French colonization of France. There is therefore a need to provide a Cambodian perspective on the events of this period. My study documents the rise of the Cambodian Nationalist Movement through the memoirs of my grandmother, Princess Bophaphuong, and my great grand father, Prince Hassakan. I have focused especially on the period from 1880-1920, and in this thesis on my grandmother's journal. She was active in the education of girls and the maintenance and transmission of Cambodian cultural knowledge and practices. In her journals she described the secret classes of children in rural areas for girls conducted by the Nationalist Movement. I undertook this research through a process of collective biography and memory work in which I evoked the circumstances of the handing over of the memoirs during the uprising of the 1970s. During this time I memorized the memoirs. For my research I wrote the memoirs down in Cambodian and then translated them into English. This process required also extensive consultation of archival documents and private collection in order to verify names, places, events from memoirs. Through the process I found that the women who worked for the Nationalist Movement sacrificed their life for the nation. I learnt how my grandmother struggled to provide education without self interest, risked her life, spent her money, and her time, and sacrificed her personal life. They achieved the literacy of girls and lower class children, who then filled middle level positions in the public service which were previously only for the rich. They educated people in the traditional cultural practices of the royal ballet and silk weaving and knowledge of their meanings. I have concluded that the princesses, and especially my grandmother, played an important role in maintaining Cambodian cultural knowledge and practices throughout the French colonization of Cambodia. This is the role that I have continued in Australia today.