BOOK REVIEW 73
administration to which even the princely rulers were completely subordinated, as were the royal chieftains of other Asian countries under European imperialist domination.
Although this part of the story is told only in Chapter Eleven, it could well have been the opening chapter of a book written in chronological order. The authors however chose, quite correctly, the current struggle of the Cambodian people against American imperialism as their main theme. It would nevertheless be appropriate to reconstruct the story in chronological order since it puts the present anti-American resistance in the historical setting of the struggles against French colonialism and Japanese aggression.
It was on April 25, 1941 that Norodom Sihanouk was chosen monarch. This was preceded by a prolonged rivalry between two clans of the royal family from either of which monarchs were selected by the colonial overlords. It so happened that on the death of King Sisowath Monivong, young Norodom was elevated to the throne. The reasons were obvious. As the prince observes, it was
because my father was a Nordom and my mother a Sisowath. The two branches of the royal family would be re-united, thus trouble would be reduced from that quarter. An additional reason was that I was young and had the reputation of being somewhat shy and scholarly. The French thought I would be more docile and malleable than my uncle Monireth, for instance, who having served in the French Foreign Legion, had the reputation of being tough. According to the German writer, Klaus Mohnert, in one of his books on Asia, the French chose me because they thought I was a 'little lamb' —later complaining that I had betrayed their faith by turning into a 'tiger5 (p 145).
How did this 'little lamb' turn 'tiger'? The author would have us believe that the spirit of struggle against the colonial overlords runs in the blood line of his ancestors. He relates the story of the fight against the French by some forebears who were punished for it. There are also many interesting anecdotes to illustrate this point. But the question remains:
why was it that the opposition of his ancestors (to the French) failed to become part of the people's resistance to imperialism as it happened in Sihanouk's case ?
The reason lies in the fact that, unlike Norodom Sihanouk, his predecessors had to face French imperialism in its days of superior military power and stable metropolitan administration. Sihanouk ascended the throne at a time when the French had already been defeated in Europe by the Nazis, and were shortly to be routed by the Japanese in Asia. The patriotic resistance movement was growing in France with the Communist Party as one of its most energetic organizers. Ho Chi-Minh, (who subsequently became the father of the Vietnamese nation and the revered 'uncle' for all the Asian peoples and especially for the brother nationalities