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The Khmers were great builders and stone carvers and they built massive cities and temples during this period to demonstrate their power and wealth. Each king aspired to build temples that were more magnificent than their predecessor, but it was King Jayavarman VII who built the famed city of Angkor Wat as well as many of the temples between the years 1181 AD to 1220 AD. These were the golden days of the Khmer rulers; trade flourished, the nation was rich and it was also a time for technology. The innovative Khmer's developed a system that utilised water from the Mekong River to irrigate their crops. After many centuries of being in power and ruling vast areas, the Khmer civilisation began to be challenged by its neighbours. Slowly, the Khmers began to admit defeat and lost more and more control. The Siamese attacked the city several times and in 1431 managed to ransack Angkor Wat and kidnap thousands of advisors, artists, dancers and skilled workmen. Slowly, the Khmers began to move out of Angkor and migrate to the Phnom Penh area where they eventually settled. King Sihanouk continued to rule the country until he was overthrown by Pol Pot, leader of the rebel Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge began to restructure Cambodia into a Maoist peasant dominated agrarian cooperative, but they were cruel and merciless when faced with even the slightest opposition. Millions of people, regardless of their age or gender, were brutally murdered or executed during their three year reign. The Khmer Rouge reign ended in 1978 when the Vietnamese launched a full scale attack on Cambodia. It took the Vietnamese only two weeks to bring down the Khmer Rouge who fled into the jungles and mountains. The Vietnamese then set up a new government with Hun Sen as its leader. Hun Sen had defected from the Khmer Rouge and taken refuge in Vietnam in 1977. | |
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