Colons and Coolies: Development of Cambodia's Rubber Plantations

by Margaret Slocomb

Recounts the history of the development of Cambodia?s rubber industry during the 1920s and 1930s. Using archival material from the era of the French Protectorate, it examines how French capital combined with Khmer land and Tonkinese labour to transform the red lands of the eastern plateaus of Cambodia into vast plantations. The book argues that the model of capitalistic colonisation?rational, bureaucratic, profit-driven, and divorced from traditional agricultural practices?established by the French remains the model for indigenous colonisation by the ruling elite in Cambodia today for large scale agribusinesses involving logging, fishing, cash and export crops such as palm oil and cashews, and further rubber plantations.

180 pages, Paperback