2018 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
The Preah Vihear Conflict: Competing Concepts on Sovereign Territory between Siam and France
Project/Area Number |
18K00993
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Research Institution | Kyoto University |
Principal Investigator |
C Pavin 京都大学, 東南アジア地域研究研究所, 准教授 (40646098)
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Project Period (FY) |
2018-04-01 – 2021-03-31
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Keywords | Spatial knowledge / Traditional knowledge / Colonial politics / Border dispute / Border demarcation / Concept of sovereignty / Siamese kingdom / Preah Vihear Temple |
Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
This year I spent much of my time working on recently released archival documents from the United States. These documents, for the first time, uncovered the differences in how Siam interpreted its limit of sovereignty from that of the French. Hence, the different views, in Siam's consciousness, caused a “mismapping” of the Preah Vihear. As for the achievements, as I began to study the documents, I soon realised that there are stark different approaches and techniques employed by the Siamese and the French. For this discovery, I am now able to find an answer to what king of geographic and topographic knowledge brought about by the two nations. The French, as evident, relied mostly on modern mapping techniques base on its spatial knowledge. The Siamese, lacking in such modern knowledge of mapping, persisted on interpreting sovereignty based on its traditional approach which was influenced by kingship and religion (Buddhism), In this, Siam believed that its kingdom was borderless which was related to the greatness of their kings and that in the Buddhist world, sovereignty was divided along the line morality and dhamma. This is a key finding which helps explain the conflict in the interpretations of the border.
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Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
I continue to study the released documents in order to understand the next conundrums on the mechanisms used by the Siamese and the French in the negotiations of border demarcation. Understand this will also make me understand how the border demarcation was finalised. Meanwhile, I am in the process of working on available literature on the issue, in order to fully understand the current situation over the Preah Vihear dispute. I have regularly conducted skype interviews with a number of experts in this area, mostly in the United States and Cambodia, in order to revisit the historical background of the border demarcation between the two countries. Moreover, I am working closely with colleagues in Brazil who lent me their knowledge of border demarcation approaches in the case of Brazil and Mexico as a comparative case study with that between Siam and Cambodia.
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Strategy for Future Research Activity |
For the fiscal year of 2019/2020, I plan to organise a workshop at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University and to invite scholars from some universities and institutes both in the United States and Cambodia to discuss on the theme of territorial disputes. Also in August 2019, I will visit Cambodia's Institute for Cooperation and Peace (CICP) where I will help hold another workshop which will produce critical articles to be published in an international peer-reviewed journal. As a chef editor of Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, I will work with Cambodian scholars to produce written works on the conflict over the Preah Vihear Temple, tentatively to have them published in Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia.
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Research Products
(3 results)