This thoroughly revised and updated edition of ‘A History of Cambodia’ provides a timely look at this increasingly visible Southeast Asian nation. Hailed by the ‘Journal of Asian Studies’ as an “original contribution, superior to any other existing work,” the first edition ended in 1953 with Cambodia’s independence from France; the second carries the narrative forward to the peace negotiations of 1990. In the new material, Chandler focuses especially on the unstable but influential career of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the bloody reign of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, and the relative calm that followed the Vietnamese invasion of 1979. This concise yet comprehensive work will illuminate – for specialists and general readers alike – the history and contemporary politics of a country long misunderstood.

Between 1958 and 1966, Dr. David P. Chandler was a U.S. Foreign Service officer and worked for two years in Phnom Penh. Since 1972, he has taught Southeast Asian history at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and since 1979 he has served as research director of the university’s Centre of Southeast Asian Studies. In 1991-1992, he was a visiting professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, University of Paris. His major publications include ‘In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History’ (coauthor), ‘The Land and People of Cambodia’, and ‘The Tragedy of Cambodian History’. His next book, ‘Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot’, will be published in 1992.