Cambodia

Citation

Tarling, N. (1999), "Cambodia", Asian Libraries, Vol. 8 No. 5, pp. 173-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/al.1999.8.5.173.1

Each volume in the World Bibliographical Series, its publisher tells us, seeks to achieve “an expression of the country” it covers and “an appreciation of its nature and national aspirations … The keynote of the series is to provide … an interpretation of each country that will express its culture, its place in the world and the qualities and background that make it unique”. The ultimate limit on such an achievement is, of course, the existence of published material. That is determined by a whole range of factors ‐ historical, political, institutional and personal. In some sense this itself will indicate the unique nature of a country and suggest something of its place in the world. But, particularly if the emphasis is, as here, on material in a language or languages other than that of the country concerned, it will be very much a view from outside.

The pre‐selected literature on Cambodia that can be drawn on, not surprisingly, puts its emphasis on the great monuments of Angkor and on the disastrous experiences of Cambodia since the Second World War. In particular, the Nixon bombardment, the Khmer Rouge regime and UNTAC. Cambodians have been in no position to expand the efforts of those foreign scholars who have written on post‐Angkor history or attempted to analyze peasant society under the French protectorate or the monarchy.

Committed to selecting some 1,000 titles, Jarvis built up a bibliographic database and then worked through it. As she says, the database, in the end some 6,000 items, will itself be useful to the National Library of Cambodia. Her selection from the database shows the fine quality of her judgment, and the annotations reflect her deep knowledge of the field, her own special interests and her sympathy with the Cambodian people.

In few cases, if any, am I disposed to challenge her appraisal of a work when it happens to be one that I know. Her comments, brief as they must be, give a good idea of the content and nature of the material. Background information about the authors is helpful, and one gets a real sense of the debate or controversy in which the authors are necessarily engaged. Often she gives the kind of comments I would like to make in a graduate seminar.

The book is, however, addressed “to the ubiquitous or perhaps imaginary ‘informed general reader’”. What that market constitutes the compiler seems uncertain, and so am I; but as this is the 200th volume in the series it must exist in some form. The bibliography includes some theses on microfilm, but it does not in general include the “learned articles” that may derive from them ‐ it is not clear whether this is in deference to the “general reader”. Scholars will find such material abstracted elsewhere, it must be said, but there are some contributions that perhaps deserve a listing here as well. In other respects this is a commendable compilation that warrants acquisition by libraries specialising in Southeast Asia.