“Like its neighbour Siam, but unfortunately to a far inferior degree, Cambodia has made, during these last years, serious efforts to improve her justice.”

 (Note on Cambodian Justice, by Henri Dartiguenave, Counsellor of the Saigon Court of Appeal, June 1914. National Archives of Cambodia, collection of the Résident Supérieur (NAC, RSC) 23803).  

 Even as they asserted increasingly direct control over their protectorate in Cambodia (1863-1953), and re-organised the administration of justice, the French were careful to be seen to operate within the legal limits of indirect rule. The Cambodian king nominally maintained internal sovereignty over his country, its laws, and its courts, and the French ruled in his name. Analogies between the legal reforms that had been initiated in Siam by King Rama V, and those imposed in Cambodia by the French, attempted to disguise the extent of French control in the protectorate. Nevertheless, Cambodian elites and the king did exercise considerable leverage, as France depended on them to facilitate and to authorise her rule. Law making involved negotiations, concessions and opportunism. A discourse of protection and respect for Cambodian tradition became, to an extent, performative. In this presentation, I examine the contests and transactions by which colonial law was made in Cambodia, drawing comparisons with some other colonised states in Southeast Asia. I also discuss the legal legacy of different forms of colonial domination, and examine law as both a construct and a method of colonisation.