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Summary
Summary
The Khmer Rouge revolution turned Cambodia into killing fields, as the Pol Pot regime murdered or starved to death a million and a half of Cambodia's eight million inhabitants. This book - a comprehensive study of the Pol Pot regime - describes the violent origins, social context and course of the revolution, providing an answer to the question of why a group of Cambodian intellectuals imposed genocide on their own country.
Author Notes
Ben Kiernan is the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University. He was founding director of the Cambodian Genocide Program from 1994 to 1999
Reviews (3)
Booklist Review
As the international community struggles to deal with "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia and brutal massacres in Central Africa, Australian-born Kiernan, controversial head of the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University's Center for International and Area Studies, synthesizes a generation of research on the 1975^-79 reign of terror in "Democratic Kampuchea" by the Khmer Rouge, who last year labeled Kiernan an "arch war criminal." Drawing on more than 500 interviews and newly available archival material, Kiernan, author of nearly a dozen studies of Cambodian history, documents the appalling extent of the Cambodian catastrophe; the significant internal resistance to the Khmer Rouge; and the racialist and totalitarian attitudes by which Pol Pot's regime justified the death, by starvation and disease as well as torture and murder, of some 1.5 million of their 8 million countrymen (disproportionately destroying "new people" considered to be influenced by foreign cultures in addition to ethnic Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai, Lao, the Islamic Cham people, and smaller Cambodian minority groups). An essential acquisition. --Mary Carroll
Choice Review
Historian Kiernan has written the most detailed history to date of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, which, under the leadership of Pol Pot, devastated Cambodia, 1975-79. Kiernan, who directs the Cambodian Genocide Project at Yale University, is regarded as one of the world's chief authorities on the Khmer Rouge. This book is the result of detailed interviews with hundreds of refugees and top Cambodian government officials, plus archival work at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, where out of 20,000 prisoners only seven survived. Kiernan concludes that the Khmer Rouge enjoyed widespread popular support before capturing state power in 1975 because they denounced the US bombing campaign, but that they were soon universally feared and hated for taking away everything Cambodians held dear--their land, their religion, and even their families. Keirnan estimates that about 1,670,000 Cambodians, one-fifth of the population, were killed by their own government; the total includes nine members of his wife's family. This book, written at an advanced level, will certainly be the benchmark against which all future research on the Khmer Rouge must be measured. Very highly recommended, with the warning that readers will need strong stomachs. Graduate; faculty. R. Marlay Arkansas State University
Library Journal Review
Pol Pot, the paramount leader of Democratic Kampuchea, trumps Hitler, Stalin, and Mao as the most bloodthirsty ruler of modern history. In fewer than four years, Pol Pot's regime caused the death of 1.7 million people in Cambodia, one-fifth of the population. Using hundreds of interviews with survivors, Kiernan, the leading authority on modern Cambodia, meticulously examines Pol Pot's killing machine and clears up many misconceptions found in earlier studies. In chilling detail, he shows that Pol Pot, obsessed with fantasies of ethnic purity and national grandeur, tried to exterminate the Cham, Vietnamese, Thai, and Lao minorities in his country. Finally, internal revolt supported by Vietnam caused the regime's collapse. An important book for students of genocide as well as scholars of Southeast Asia.Steven I. Levine, Boulder Run Research, Hillsborough, N.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface to the Second Edition | p. ix |
| Acknowledgments | p. xvii |
| List of Acronyms | p. xxi |
| Glossary | p. xxiii |
| Chapter 1 Introduction: The Making of the 1975 Khmer Rouge Victory | p. 1 |
| Part I Wiping the Slate Clean: The Regime Takes Shape | |
| Chapter 2 Cleansing the Cities: The Quest for Total Power | p. 31 |
| Chapter 3 Cleansing the Countryside: Race, Power, and the Party, 1973-75 | p. 65 |
| Chapter 4 Cleansing the Frontiers: Neighbors, Friends, and Enemies, 1975-76 | p. 102 |
| Part II Writing on the Slate, 1975-77: The CPK Project | |
| Chapter 5 An Indentured Agrarian State, 1975-77 (I): The Base Areas--The Southwest and the East | p. 159 |
| Chapter 6 An Indentured Agrarian State, 1975-77 (II): Peasants and Deportees in the Northwest | p. 216 |
| Chapter 7 Ethnic Cleansing: The CPK and Cambodia's Minorities, 1975-77 | p. 251 |
| Part III The Slate Crumbles, 1977-79: Convulsion and Destruction | |
| Chapter 8 Power Politics, 1976-77 | p. 313 |
| Chapter 9 Foreign Relations, 1977-78: Warfare, Weapons, and Wildlife | p. 357 |
| Chapter 10 "Thunder without Rain": Race and Power in Cambodia, 1978 | p. 386 |
| Chapter 11 The End of the Pol Pot Regime | p. 440 |
| Select Bibliography | p. 467 |
| Index | p. 471 |
