The Khmer Lands of Vietnam: Environment, Cosmology, Sovereignty by Philip Taylor (review)

In recent years borderlands have become a popular site for ethnographic research. One of Southeast Asia’s most fascinating borderlands is found in the Mekong delta region of southern Vietnam, that region known to Khmers as ‘Kampuchea Krom’, or ‘lower Cambodia’. Home to somewhere between 1 and 7 million Khmers (depending on whether one accepts the official census data or the lower end of Khmer estimates), its Khmer minority has a problematic relationship with both the state of Vietnam and Cambodia. To the Vietnamese officials the Khmer Krom, as they call themselves, are regarded condescendingly as a ‘parochial and disengaged ethnic minority whose innate characteristics keep them backward and poor’ (p. 3). To their ethnic kin in Cambodia, while Kampuchea Krom forms a crucial part of the narrative of the national loss of territory, the Khmer identity of its contemporary inhabitants is in doubt. The fact that many cannot write Khmer, or that they speak Khmer with Vietnamese accents, leads some Cambodians to view them as ‘Vietnamese souls in Khmer bodies’ (p. 3). Like many peoples of borderlands regions elsewhere, the Khmer Krom themselves are acutely aware of their marginalized status. It is this status that Taylor seeks to re-examine and question in his captivating book, The Khmer Lands of Vietnam.

This is surely the most thorough study of this region and its Khmer minority ever undertaken. It is based on a remarkable amount of fieldwork. Taylor conducted 17 fieldtrips to the region, during which he visited over 400 villages. Some trips lasted up to six months. He also visited villages across the border in Cambodia proper. But the real methodological achievement of this study is its systematic study of the unique ecology of this region. Not content to conduct a general study of the region, Taylor divides the region up into seven sub-regions, each defined by a distinct ecology: the ‘coast dune belt’; the ‘coastal river dune complex’; ‘freshwater rivers’; ‘saltwater rivers’; ‘flooded mountains’; ‘oceanside mountains’; and ‘northeast uplands’. This in itself challenges the idea of a single narrative of the Khmer Krom. The recurring theme is scarcity of land and water, and how the Khmer of the different regions manage these resources, often in highly innovative ways.

Taylor’s method is to begin each chapter with a thorough description of the distinct ecology of each of these sub-regions. From there he proceeds to describe the livelihood that each particular ecology makes possible, the social organization it supports, and the cultural expression, mythology, and cosmology that arise from it. While not as pronounced as the ecological descriptions, each chapter integrates a historical dimension that explains the narrative of marginalization. Kampuchea Krom was one of the most affected regions in Southeast Asia during the political instability of the second half of the twentieth century. Decolonization, the First Indochina War of 1945–54, the ‘American War’, and the border conflict of 1978–9 have had disastrous consequences for the Khmer Krom. War led not only to death and injury and material destruction, but also to mass evacuation or forced resettlement and ultimately the loss of Khmer land. More recently, the Vietnamese government’s policies of agricultural modernization and economic liberalization, beginning in the mid-1980s, have often resulted in the further economic marginalization of the Khmer Krom. Lacking sufficient capital required for intensive farming, many Khmers have ultimately been forced to sell their land, exacerbating the problem of landlessness. Taylor also describes the social and cultural consequences of environmental decline, as the once vast natural resources of the region—dense forests, wild animals, multiple species of fish, plants, herbal medicine, and clean water—are depleted through deforestation, the use of pesticides, and mining. The local economy has become increasingly dominated by ‘external economic agents’. The resulting economic marginalization has in many cases led to a loss of cultural confidence.

One of the many highlights of the book is the tales that Taylor gleaned from his informants which stand...