What I Read: Cambodia's Curse: A Modern History of a Troubled Land

I wanted to read some books about or set in Cambodia before our trip.  Most of the history books I found looked like in-depth political treatises about the Khmer Rouge.  I was ready to give up when I stumbled across Cambodia's Curse: A Modern History of a Troubled Land.

History books (and I'm a history major, so I can say this) can be a bit dry.  If you're browsing a bookstore, you at least have the opportunity to read a few passages to decide how readable the book is before you commit.  I didn't have that opportunity with this book, so I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into.  I was pleased to discover that it was remarkably readable, if a bit repetitive.

Here's a quick rundown of Cambodian political history for the last half century:
- 1950s to 1975: Cambodia, which is a neighbor of Vietnam, had a US-friendly puppet government
- 1975 to 1979: Khmer Rouge fighters, led by Pol Pot, ousted the previous regime and proceeded to kill an estimated 2 million people, started with anyone who was educated
- 1979 to 1989: Vietnam invaded Cambodia and installed a Vietnam-friendly puppet government
- 1989 to 1992: Vietnam pulled out of the country and left the Cambodians to their own devices
- 1992 to 1993: Cambodia became a UN protectorate, with the hope that they would be able to educate and train government officials and then leave the country to govern itself.
- 1993 to present: nominally democratic elections are not actually democratic at all

Joel Brinkley goes into detail on the above history, which constitutes about the first 1/3 of the book.  After that, he looks at the legacy that all this tumult has had on the Cambodian people, and how it continues to affect the country, suppress its economy, and keep its people in poverty -- mostly through an astonishing amount of bribery and corruption at all levels of government.  He also takes a look at the psychology of so many years of uncertainty on the population as a whole.

For example, people in other Asian nations have stereotyped Cambodians as lazy.  Why don't they do something to better themselves?  Brinkley disputes this assumption, by explaining that regime change has been the source of death and destruction for Cambodians for generations.  As a consequence, they have developed an, "it is what it is" attitude.  It's better, he argues, to keep your head down and not complain about your poverty than it is to try to effect change and end up dead.  Cambodians are terribly opposed to conflict of all kinds, and our travel book warned us to be careful about not raising our voices or appearing upset during any interactions with locals.

Overall, it's a mix of depressing and explanatory.  But most importantly for when you're stuck on a long flight or car ride, readable.