WITH CHRIST IN INDOCHINA - IndoChina1911

Another writer says of the temple of Angkor, the
largest individual ruin, that it was a rival to the
Temple of Solomon, and must have been erected by
some ancient Michelangelo. He says, "It is grander
than anything left to us by Greece or Rome."
But just as these evidences of ancient glory are
now a ruin, so the Cambodia of today is a sorry
caricature of what it used to be. Historians tell us
that in the twelfth century the kingdom of the
Khmers reached from the Bay of Bengal to the
China Sea. These Khmers were the ancient Cambodians.
Not only the civilized Cambodians of today
belong to this race, but also many of the wild
tribes of the jungles.
When the Portuguese visited the country in the
fifteenth century, there were still traces of its former
greatness. Siam had been subject to the Khmers,
but in the middle of the fourteenth century had
thrown off this yoke. Later the Annamese began to
invade Cochin-China, which was an integral part of
Cambodia. There was constant fighting between
Cambodia, Siam, and Annam for many years. Gradually
Cambodia was thus ground down, until, by the
middle of the eighteenth century, all of Cochin-
China had been ceded to the Annamese, and the rest
of the country had become practically a dependency
of Siam. In 1863 Cambodia sought the aid of France
against Siam, and in 1883 became a French protectorate.