Military history of Cambodia

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The earliest traces of armed conflict in the territory that constitutes modern Cambodia date to the Iron Age settlement of Phum Snay in north-western Cambodia.^[1]

Sources on Funan's military structure are rare. Funan represents the oldest known regional political entity, formed by the unification of local principalities. Whether these events must be categorized as conflict remains unclear^[2] More information is available for Funan's successor state - Chenla, which has been characterized as distinctly bellicose as it was established by the military subjugation of Funan.^[3] Chenla's early aristocrats heralded authority by public display of their noble genealogies carved onto stone stelae all over Indochina. Later, rulers increasingly embraced the concept of divine Hindu kingship.^[4]

The Khmer Empire's territory and integrity was maintained through the Royal Army, personally commanded by the king. Records exist for regular conflict with the kingdom's neighbors, Champa in particular, as the empire effectively controlled Mainland South-east Asia by the 12th century.^[5] Nonetheless, the Khmer kingdom suffered a number of serious defeats, such as the Cham invasion and sack of Angkor in 1177. Khmer military supremacy declined by the early 14th century.^[6] Since the rise of the Siam Sukhothai Kingdom and later the Ayutthaya Kingdom the empire experienced a series of military setbacks, unable to repel repeated attacks, that eventually caused its collapse followed by the Post-Angkor Period.

The period of decline and stagnation (around 1450 to 1863) nearly ended the Khmer aristocrat's royal dynastic sovereignty and unity of the Khmer people as the result of prolonged encroachments by its neighbours Vietnam and Thailand.^[7] In 1863 the Cambodian king acquiesced in the establishment of a French protectorate over his country to prevent its imminent incorporation into Vietnam in the east and the loss of its western provinces to Thailand.^[8]

No centrally organized military actions took place during the French protectorate, although notable was an 1883/84 nationwide revolt "which saw thousands of French troops do battle with shadowy bands of Cambodian guerrilla insurgents throughout the countryside". Several local uprisings are accounted for, which caused considerable problems for the colonial authorities. However, mainly reactions to French tax rulings and other perceived legislative injustices and without clear political objective, these endeavours had no decisive consequences.^[9] French colonial troops engaged in several conflicts with Thailand and suppressed revolts in Vietnam and Laos.^[10]

The Japanese incursion and 1945 coup d'état initiated a decade of political and ethnic re-emancipation of Cambodia, brought about without large-scale military action.^[11] Since Cambodia's independence in 1954 the country was to be the stage for a series of proxy wars of the cold war powers, foreign incursions and civil wars, that only effectively ended with the UN Mandate in the early 1990s.^[12][13]