This latest Thai incursion into Cambodia is just one in a long line of Thai gambits in hopes to boost a weak, copycat culture, with a history of sycophantic kings, into a major geopolitical player. Such hegemonic fantasies, masquerading as earnest empire-building and genuine social change is, hopefully, still out of their reach.
A good example of accomplished social change is found in the Magna Carta, signed by King John of England, on June 15, 1215, establishing the principle of the rule of law, asserting the king was subject to the law and not above it. Or, the Communist revolution in China, led by Mao Zedong, establishing the People's Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949, which was the dialectical outcome of material contradictions—landlord versus peasant, nation versus imperialism—whose resolution in struggle produced the socialist state.
These events, rooted in justice and self determination, eventually raised both those countries into unstoppable powers. So why can’t we see anything like this happening in Thailand any time soon? Because both those countries’s accomplishments rested upon high principles, selfless courage, and an ardent self sufficiency. And while an overreaching desire for such global recognition goes all the way back to the Thai people’s Kingdom of Ayutthaya, such virtues as mentioned above have seldom if ever been demonstrated.
Notably, unlike the last century’s incursion of China into Tibet, which was deceptively gradual, then quite sudden, with a shelling of the Potala and His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama leaving in the middle of the night, by comparison, what Thailand has done and is still doing to Cambodia is like a slow drip water torture. Or the cruel cutting off of fingers, toes, arms and legs from the body of the former Khmer Empire over centuries.
It’s a pathetic story. The amazing shrinkage of the Khmer Empire into its present basin-like configuration that is today’s Cambodia. One stressing theft by Thailand, Vietnam, and modern colonial powers.
The Khmer Empire, once the greatest power in mainland Southeast Asia, stretched from the Mekong basin across much of present-day Thailand, Laos, southern Vietnam, and even into Myanmar and Malaysia. At its height between the 9th and 13th centuries, Angkor ruled vast and fertile territories, commanding trade routes, rice plains, and coastal access. Khmer tradition traces this power back to the daring feat of Jayavarman II, who, in the 8th century, leapt upon an elephant in defiance of foreign overlords and proclaimed himself universal monarch, securing independence from Javanese or Cham control.¹ But over centuries of decline, and finally in the absence of a guardian power, Cambodia’s heartland was steadily whittled down by neighbors and foreign empires.
From the 14th century onward, Siam (Thailand) pushed eastward, seizing Khmer provinces and eventually sacking Angkor in 1431—already weakened and partly abandoned—forcing the Khmer court to retreat southward. Western Cambodia remained under Thai domination for centuries, while to the east, Vietnam advanced into the Mekong Delta, absorbing the fertile Khmer Krom lands and severing Cambodia from the sea. By the time of French colonization in the 19th century, the once-vast Khmer realm had contracted into the basin-like territory that constitutes present-day Cambodia, a remnant of its former imperial reach.
It’s doubtful Cambodia’s current neighbors to the north, and northwest, Thailand, ever heroically conquered or honorably ‘won’ any portion of the former Khmer Empire. They simply continued to encroach. That also goes for the Ayutthaya kings, who established the present day Thai script from Old Khmer. Nor has any modern power, principally the French and Japanese, before, during, and after WW2, ever rightfully, or justly, excised the ancient Kingdom’s land and given it to Cambodia’s neighbors.
Long before that happened, before the 1700’s, Khmer Krong, literally, ‘the Khmer below’, or ethnic Khmers living in what is now claimed to be South Vietnam, had been gradually annexed by the Nguyễn lords. Today, over a million Khmer Krom still live in southern Vietnam, especially in the Delta.
Colonial powers added a final chapter to this contraction. The French protectorate in the 19th century fixed Cambodia’s borders largely as they remain today, ostensibly to shield the kingdom but in practice legalizing centuries of Thai and Vietnamese encroachment.
Consider the following argument about the faux creation of ‘Thailand’ as heir to the weak and contrived, ‘Ayutthaya Empire.’ Another claim suggesting inauthenticity by its very name, ‘Ayutthaya,’ lifted from the fictional Indian city of Ayodhya. Etymologically, that name means ‘Invincible City,’ from whence Rama came, and his capitol is featured in the Indian epic, Ramayana. But it too, same as Thai claims to any more of the Khmer Empire, is wholly fictional.
This naming was deliberate: it grafted a mythical aura of invincibility and sanctity onto a new Southeast Asian power that was once chronicled by European visitors as one of three great Asian trading powers of the seventeenth century: Vijayanagar, or the wider commercial networks of Southern India; Ming–Qing China; and the kingdom of Ayutthaya in Siam.
While each was a hub of exchange, drawing merchants from across the world, only two of them were significant producers of original goods. Southern India thrived on the export of fine cotton textiles, spices, and gemstones, linking its ports such as Masulipatnam and Calicut with Persia, the Red Sea, and Southeast Asia. China, with its immense internal market, was the dominant source of silk, porcelain, and later tea, drawing in vast flows of silver from European and Japanese traders alike.
Ayutthaya, however, strategically positioned at the crossroads of the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea, became a cosmopolitan entrepôt (a warehouse or depository for fine goods, like porcelain and silk), its rulers welcoming Persian, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese merchants, as well as the Portuguese, Dutch, and English, lending it panache as one of the most vibrant commercial centers of the early modern world.
So just as the Ayodhya of the Ramayana is contested and elusive, so too the “empire” of Ayutthaya was constructed more from borrowed symbols than independent foundations. Ayutthaya’s early “conquests” over Khmer lands were inheritances of abandonment, not triumphs of war. By stepping into the ruins of Angkor, Ayutthaya claimed an imperial mantle that was no longer actively defended. Like its mythic naming, this appropriation created an illusion of victory rather than a true empire forged in conquest.
An example of its gifted sycophancy is found in the 17th century when Ayutthaya achieved global prestige by courting French and English powers, especially under King Narai and his submissive behavior with the embassies to Louis XIV’s Versailles. Most famously, Narai pursued close ties with France, hoping to counterbalance Dutch dominance. He dispatched lavish embassies to Louis XIV’s court at Versailles in 1684 and 1686, where Siamese envoys performed elaborate acts of deference before the Sun King.
When the French embassies arrived at Ayutthaya (notably in 1685 and 1687), King Narai received them with enormous ceremony. According to French accounts, the envoys insisted that the letter from Louis XIV must be presented directly into Narai’s hands rather than laid at the foot of the throne, as was customary in Siamese court protocol. Narai, eager to cultivate France as an ally against the Dutch, leaned forward and lowered himself from the throne to accept the letter.
For the French, this act symbolized the Sun King’s prestige, as though the monarch of Siam had acknowledged Louis XIV’s superior rank. For Narai, however, the gesture was a calculated diplomatic accommodation: Siamese kingship traditionally emphasized ritual hierarchy within the kingdom, but toward foreigners, Narai often bent the rules if it brought commercial or strategic benefit.
This moment became famous in European reports, since it suggested that even a powerful Asian monarch had deferred to the grandeur of Versailles. In reality, some might argue, it shows how Ayutthaya at its peak engaged in pragmatic diplomacy, sometimes appearing submissive, by European standards. But was, in fact, a skillful leveraging of ritual flexibility to secure its place in global trade and politics.
In short, Ayutthaya’s prestige was secured less by force than by Narai’s success gained through sycophantic gestures before foreign powers. Ayutthaya’s global renown was won as much by sycophantic deference as by commercial wealth. When carefully considered, this reflects borrowed grandeur: a mirror-empire, whose image of majesty depended on Europe’s recognition. Thus, Ayutthaya rested on a triple fiction: Ayodhya’s myth, Angkor’s ruins, and Versailles’ validation.
Again, regarding the very nature of its namesake, Ayodhya, Hindu revivalists later sought to recreate the sanctity of the famed city in India, claiming its geography as sacred ground. Yet Buddhist scripture itself undermines this claim: The Samyutta Nikaya places Ayodhya (Pali: Ayojjha/Ayujjha) on the banks of the Ganga, not the Sarayu.
Buddhagosha, who famously tranlated Sinhalese Buddhist writings into Khmer, wrote in a commentary that Ayodhya’s citizens built a vihara for the Buddha there, “in a curve of the Ganga.” This directly contradicts the later claim that modern Ayodhya on the Sarayu was the true epic city of Rama. Philology confirms the Buddhist correction: In the Atharvaveda, “ayodhya” means “impregnable,” describing not a city but the human body as an eight-wheeled, nine-doored fortress of the gods. The Bhagavad Gita also uses the metaphor of the body as a nine-doored city. Scholars like B.B. Lal and the 14th-century commentator Sayana emphasize that “ayodhya” was an epithet, not a toponym.
Thus, the very word that Ayutthaya borrowed for legitimacy is less a geography than a metaphor for invincibility—a magical adjective, not a real city. And the mythical Ayodhya was never a fixed historical city but a poetic metaphor. Ayutthaya’s kingship borrowed that metaphor to inflate its own majesty. But whether in Khmer ruins, European diplomacy, or borrowed names, Ayutthaya’s empire was constructed on illusions of power. As a Buddhist country, perhaps it’s right that Buddhist texts puncture this illusion, showing Ayodhya as metaphor, not place—and by extension exposes Ayutthaya’s imperial grandeur as a fiction of names, myths, and borrowed light.
So this contrivance is both prologue and insight into Thailand’s hollow, propagandist claims to precious UNESCO protected ruins in Cambodia. There’s an historical parallel, in the case of China invading Tibet, where later the Gang of Four eventually destroyed over six thousand monasteries and stupas, and it just spread the Buddha’s non-materialist doctrine around the world, as if blowing into a puff-ball flower and disseminating its spores.
Going onto Instagram or TikTok, one finds a plethora of posts from and about peace loving Cambodians. Similar to China’s aggression toward Tibet, Thailand’s unearned, unjustified incursions into Cambodia also further spreads the Buddha’s Dharma, one of loving kindness and compassion toward others, reflecting the everlasting need for peace and love. This, after eighty-years of war, revolution, and Khmer Rouge genocide, the K’mai deserve.
Footnote
1. The story of Jayavarman II’s “elephant leap” survives only in later chronicles and oral traditions; it is absent from contemporary sources. The Sdok Kak Thom inscription (1053 CE) records his consecration as chakravartin around 802 CE, freeing Cambodia from foreign domination (whether Javanese or Cham is debated). David Chandler emphasizes its symbolic role in legitimizing Khmer kingship (A History of Cambodia, 4th ed. [Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008], 36–38). Charles Higham highlights its blend of myth and political ideology (The Civilization of Angkor [London: Phoenix, 2002], 59–61). Michael Vickery cautions against accepting the legendary details, noting the absence of corroborating evidence (Society, Economics, and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia [Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1998], 379–83).
Modern Historians Sources
• David Chandler, A History of Cambodia (Westview Press, 2018).
Standard modern survey of Cambodian history; useful for understanding the long arc of Khmer decline and the shaping of modern Cambodia.
• Charles Higham, The Civilization of Angkor (Phoenix, 2002).
Focuses on Angkor’s archaeology and culture, situating its rise and fall within wider Southeast Asian patterns.
• Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975–
1982 (South End Press, 1984), esp.
historical introduction.
Although centered on the Khmer Rouge era, its introduction gives a sharp revisionist view of earlier Cambodian history.
• Vickery, Michael. Society, Economics,
and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia:
The 7th–8th Centuries. Tokyo: Centre
for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1998.
• Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to
Power (Yale University Press, 2004).
Traces Cambodia’s historical trajectory leading to the 20th century, with attention to external pressures and territorial losses.
• B. B. Lal, scholarly interpretation of ayodhya as adjective, not toponym.
Argues that ayodhya in the Vedic and epic sources meant “impregnable” rather than a fixed city-name, challenging nationalist readings.
Classical and Indic Sources
• Saṃyutta Nikāya.
Contains a passage situating the Buddha in Ayodhya on the banks of the Ganga, showing the term’s early Buddhist usage.
• Buddhaghosa, Commentary on the
Saṃyutta Nikāya.
Notes that Ayodhya’s citizens built a monastery “in a curve of the river Ganga,” adding historical-geographical detail.
• Atharvaveda 10.2.31.
Describes an “eight-wheeled, nine-doored impregnable stronghold of the gods,” linked by scholars to the metaphorical sense of ayodhya.
• Atharvaveda 19.13.3 and 19.13.7.
Use cognate forms (ayodhyena, ayodhyaḥ) in the sense of “invincible,” reinforcing its adjectival meaning.
• Sāyaṇa (14th century).
Classical commentator who explicitly explains ayodhya as “impregnable,” not a city-name, reflecting the pre-modern exegetical tradition.
• Bhagavad Gītā 5.13.
Uses the metaphor of the human body as
a “city with nine gates” (nava-dvāre
pure), conceptual parallel to ayodhya as
a metaphor rather than a place.
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