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With the aid of his French 'protectors',
King Norodom moved his capital from Udong to the
sleepy riverside town of Phnom Penh in 1866. Though
having served as the country's capital in 1434
- three years after the fall of Angkor - attempts
to rekindle the former Khmer empire only led to
the city's destruction by the Siamese in 1473.
So it was that French finance and technical know-how
were behind the building of the country's new
capital.
Many of the Cambodian styled temples and buildings
were the work of the French and even King Norodom's
Royal Palace was constructed to French design
- atop the site of a former, 19th-century, citadel.
Despite building one of the most colonial of French-colonial
capitals - with its trademark wide boulevards,
mansions and shophouses, France had very little
interest in developing Cambodia, other than as
a potential, but doomed, thoroughfare, via the
Mekong River to China. With their final withdrawal
in 1953, Cambodia achieved an independence that
it had not known for nearly five hundred years.
It was to last less than two decades.
During this time, however, the city prospered
with up to two-thirds of the 600,000 population
in 1970 consisting of Chinese merchants and Vietnamese
workers. But, five years later, the city was almost
deserted; it's inhabitants driven into the countryside
by the Khmer Rouge. Phnom Penh was left to rot.
By the time UNTAC forces arrived in 1992 - after
five years of Khmer Rouge decimation, a decade
of Vietnamese occupation and several years of
civil war - they found a bedraggled city, bowing
under the pressure from the influx of nearly a
million people, and its once-grand plumbing system
in pieces.
Since then, the Royal Palace, the national museum
and Royal Hotel have all undergone substantial
renovation, while the National Bank - blown up
by the Khmer Rouge in 1975 - was rebuilt on the
same site in the late 80s. With the help of a
great deal of foreign aid and private investment
- and if developers can be kept under control
- there is every chance that the capital of the
once-more independent Cambodia will regain its
former beauty |
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