King Sisowath’s Alsace-Lorraine? Comparing European and Southeast Asian Borderlands, Past and Present

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In 1795, amidst growing internal conflict, Siam took possession of northwestern Cambodia as part of a political arrangement to support the Cambodian monarchy. Over a century later, King Sisowath of Cambodia traveled to Paris and appealed to his colonial overseers for support in retaking those “lost” territories. In his speech, Sisowath stoked the empathy of the French by employing a metaphor they would immediately recognize when he dramatically pleaded, “Give me back my Alsace-Lorraine!” Sisowath was successful, and France intervened to help restore those territories to Cambodian control by 1907. The king’s metaphor has endured, and scholars continue to refer to northwestern Cambodia as “Southeast Asia’s Alsace-Lorraine.” But how appropriate is this metaphor? In this paper, I explore the historical circumstances and postcolonial identity-making processes linking northwestern Cambodia and Alsace-Lorraine in order to advocate for increased scholarly interest in the comparative history of contested borderlands.

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