Culturalisme et historiographie du Cambodge ancien : à propos de la hiérarchisation des sources de l’histoire khmère
Michael Vickery’s recent Society, Economics and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia. The 7th-8th Centuries, the first book to deal thoroughly with a key period of Ancient Cambodia, will remain as a fundamental contribution to Khmer studies. The methodological and theoretical renewal claimed by the autho...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Université de Provence
2004-09-01
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| Series: | Moussons |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/moussons/2469 |
| Summary: | Michael Vickery’s recent Society, Economics and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia. The 7th-8th Centuries, the first book to deal thoroughly with a key period of Ancient Cambodia, will remain as a fundamental contribution to Khmer studies. The methodological and theoretical renewal claimed by the author, however, is not free of some schematism, particularly when he ranks the sources for their value in reconstructing Khmer history. His prejudiced distrust of Chinese texts leads him to disregard a substantial part of the information that they can provide. The present article, resorting to modern sinological criticism, is mostly meant as an attempt to rehabilitate such Chinese sources. Beyond a critical assessment of Vickery’s commonly rigid opinions, it shows how the repeatedly distorted portrayal of Chinese sources betrays the culturalist views lingering behind concepts in use in recent historiographic research on Southeast Asia to deal with cross representations of China, India, and Southeast Asia. |
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| ISSN: | 1620-3224 2262-8363 |