Energetic Cambodian monarch who after abdicating the throne became an important figure in his country’s turbulent political life
Norodom Sihanouk was a gifted and mercurial participant in Cambodian politics for more than 70 years. He reigned for many years as Cambodia’s king and abdicated in 1955 in order to take up a political career. In the so-called Sihanouk period (1955-70), when he served first as prime minister and later as chief of state, he displayed a formidable array of political skills while ruling his “children”, as he called them in a theatrical, benevolent and despotic fashion.
After he was removed from office in 1970 in a bloodless coup, Sihanouk formed an alliance with the Cambodian Communists, or Khmer Rouge, hoping to return as chief of state. Instead, the Khmer Rouge, after they came to power in 1975, held him prisoner for three years before they were driven from power.
Sihanouk spent the 1980s in exile, mostly in Beijing. He returned home briefly in 1991 and was crowned king for the second time in 1993. Given nothing significant to do, he abdicated again in 2004. From then on he lived primarily in Beijing and never spent more than a few weeks a year in his native country.
Norodom Sihanouk was born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1922, when the southeast Asian kingdom formed a part of French Indo-China. He was the only child of Prince Norodom Suramarit and Princess Sisowath Kossamak, whose father, Sisowath Monivong, reigned as king during much of Sihanouk’s boyhood.
When Monivong died in 1941 the French plucked Sihanouk from high school in Saigon and named him king — it was a position he had never expected to occupy. At the time Japanese troops were stationed throughout Indo-China with the permission of the French, who remained in administrative control.
The French assumed that Sihanouk would be a pliable ruler of Cambodia in perilous times. In March 1945, however, the Japanese imprisoned French officials throughout Indo-China and encouraged Sihanouk to declare Cambodia’s independence, which he did with little enthusiasm. The newly named Kingdom of Kampuchea lasted until the French returned to Cambodia in force in October 1945, as Sihanouk knew they would. The young King welcomed them warmly and soon regained their backing.
The French were in no hurry to leave Indo-China, but to reduce nationalist pressure they allowed political parties to form in Cambodia in 1946. Elections in 1947 and 1951, the first in Cambodian history, were won by the mildly proindependence Democrat Party. As he gained self-confidence Sihanouk feuded with the Democrats but he waited until 1952, when France’s war against rebels in Indo-China was going badly, to confront the French himself. He shut down the Democrat-controlled National Assembly and embarked on what he called a “royal crusade for independence”, threatening to abdicate and to arm the Cambodian people if France kept control of the kingdom.
Taken aback, the French caved in and granted Cambodia its independence in November 1953. A royal decree, signed by the King, named him the Father of Independence.
In mid-1955 Sihanouk abdicated, had his father named king in his place, and set out as a Prince on a political career. Political parties ceased to exist, and Sihanouk’s personally sanctioned political movement, the Sangkum Reastr Niyum (People’s Socialist Community), came to dominate political life, winning four elections against derisory opposition between 1955 and 1966. When King Suramarit died in 1960 Sihanouk allowed the monarchy to lapse as an institution.
Throughout the Sihanouk period the Prince was immensely popular among the Cambodian peasantry, towards whom he displayed sustained and genuine affection. Domestically, he supported improvements in Cambodia’s education but was intolerant of dissent and easily bored by economic issues. In the international arena he energetically pursued a policy of neutralism, which alienated him from the US, Thailand and South Vietnam, but pleased de Gaulle’s regime in France, non-aligned nations and the Sino-Soviet Bloc.
Walking a tightrope of his own design, the Prince attracted substantial assistance from a range of donors and kept Cambodia out of the Second Indo-China War then being waged less than 70 miles from Phnom Penh. Unsurprisingly, many elderly Cambodians still see his years in power as a kind of golden age.
By the late 1960s, however, governing the country singlehandedly became difficult for the Prince and his behaviour became erratic. He spent much of his time writing, directing and starring in popular films that dramatised Cambodia’s joie de vivre and his own importance.
As economic conditions worsened and as the war in Vietnam intensified, many of the urban elite withdrew their support from him. As the Cultural Revolution flourished in China, Sihanouk also lost the backing of young Cambodians like Hun Sen, Cambodia’s prime minister since 1985, who were attracted to radical ideas. A civil war against communist-led guerrillas — the so-called Khmer Rouge — broke out in 1968.
In March 1970 the National Assembly voted Sihanouk out of office while he was travelling abroad. The new regime, led by General Lon Nol, plunged Cambodia into the Vietnam war via an alliance with the US.
Sihanouk was deeply affronted by the coup. He took refuge in Beijing and with Chinese encouragement became the head of a government in exile, allied with the Communist Vietnamese, the Peoples’ Republic of China and the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) led by Saloth Sar, alias Pol Pot. His allies promised to return him to power. Lon Nol, meanwhile, decided to attack the Communist forces dominated by North Vietnam inside Cambodia. These forces cut his poorly trained army to ribbons, and after 1971 he was unable to mount any offensive action despite massive infusions of American aid. The CPK forces gained experience, confidence and thousands of recruits, especially after Vietnamese troops withdrew in 1972.
In the five-year war, perhaps as many as half a million Cambodians perished. Many of the casualties were inflicted by a massive US aerial bombardment in 1973 that postponed a CPK victory for a couple of years.
In April 1975 CPK forces overwhelmed the Lon Nol regime. Pol Pot and his colleagues immediately set in motion a series of harsh economic and political measures, including the evacuation of cities, the execution of political enemies, the abolition of money and the collectivisation of agriculture.
The regime called itself Democratic Kampuchea (DK) and its dogmatic, inexperienced and terrifying leaders presided over the deaths of over 1.5 million Khmer, or roughly a quarter of the country’s population. The dead included six of Sihanouk’s 14 children.
Pol Pot and his colleagues summoned Sihanouk home in 1975 as chief of state but gave him no duties. In the following year, they forced him to resign and placed him under house arrest on the grounds of the former royal palace. Although he lived in relative comfort, Sihanouk in this period expected to be killed from one day to the next.
In 1978 DK went to war with Vietnam and by the end of December, facing a Vietnamese invasion, it was on the brink of collapse. Three days before the fall of Phnom Penh, Sihanouk was flown to the US to plead DK’s case. Soon afterwards he sought asylum in Beijing. By 1980, with Chinese encouragement, he began presenting himself as a valid alternative to the Peoples’ Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), the pro-Vietnamese regime that had taken power in Phnom Penh.
Sihanouk’s ongoing marriage of convenience with the Khmer Rouge, whose forces formed the backbone of anti-PRK resistance along the Thai-Cambodian border in the 1980s, diminished his credibility. However, as the Cold War ended and as foreign powers sought to extricate themselves from their commitments to Indochina, Sihanouk came to be seen by some, as he had always seen himself, as an indispensable, unifying element in a Cambodian government that would be acceptable to foreign powers and to Cambodia’s hostile political factions.
Under the Paris peace agreements in 1991, Sihanouk returned to Cambodia after 12 years in exile, and was greeted by enthusiastic crowds. In 1993, guided by the UN, Cambodia held national elections, which were won by a royalist party, led by Sihanouk’s eldest son, Norodom Rannaridh, whom Sihanouk disliked. The winners were quickly forced to share power with the Cambodian Peoples’ Party (CPP), which had monopolised Cambodian politics under various names since 1979.
In October 1993 Sihanouk was crowned king for the second time. At his request, the pre-1970 Cambodian flag was reinstated along with pre-1970 street names in Phnom Penh, the abandoned royal palace and pre-1970 military uniforms. Sihanouk also bestowed royal titles on many CPP officials, but their loyalty to him was almost nonexistant.
Although Sihanouk in the 1990s was almost as energetic as ever, Hun Sen saw to it that he had limited authority, no media outlets, and no sustained contacts with the population. Chafing under these restrictions and pleading ill-heath, Sihanouk spent much of the period in Beijing and North Korea. In 2004 he abdicated for the second time. His youngest son, Norodom Sihamoni, a childless bachelor, took his place, and it seemed clear to many that the demise of Cambodian royalty as an institution was only a matter of time. It had probably been fatally wounded in 1960, when Sihanouk refused to have a king named in his father’s place.
Norodom Sihanouk is inseparable from the history of 20th-century Cambodia, and a balanced view of his 70-year career is difficult to assemble. He was a hard-working patriot whose unpredictable actions often had deleterious effects. An ardent Francophile, he also befriended the Chinese Prime Minister Zhou enlai, and after 1970 he never challenged Chinese policy. This alliance led him to support the Khmer Rouge for much longer than most Cambodians would have liked. His opponents also criticised his autocratic, ego-driven style, his fondness of flattery and his intolerance of dissent.
His supporters, while admitting his flaws, pointed to his unswerving devotion to Cambodian independence and praised his affection for Cambodia’s rural poor. Moreover, unlike many southeast Asian rulers, Sihanouk made no effort to enrich himself during his years in power. A talented musician, an eloquent orator and a fluent writer, Sihanouk vigorously defended his place in history in several volumes of self-serving memoirs, written in elegant French.
Sihanouk fathered 12 children before he married Monique Izzi in 1955. She bore him two children, including the reigning monarch and was crowned Queen Monineak in 1992. She survives him, as do six of his children.
Norodom Sihanouk, ruler of Cambodia, was born on October 31, 1922. He died on October 14, 2012, aged 89
