178. Telegram From the Embassy in Cambodia to the Department of State1
457. Our reporting of current French plans for dominance in Cambodia has been so extensive (CF Embtels 4022 and 4263) that little additional comment (Deptel 252 repeated Paris 23904) seems necessary. However, in light of penultimate paragraph Paris telegram 2859 repeated Phnom Penh 57,5 it may be useful for record to point out that no matter what French Parliamentarians think of position France occupies in Cambodia, it is certainly not true French have “paid heavy price in lives and money over the years in developing the country”.
As for cost in men, history of war in Indochina is conclusive that final successful Cambodian resistance to Viet Minh was carried out by Cambodians, not Frenchmen.
It is a matter of historic record that Cambodia has been consistently exploited by French for some 90 years. Cambodians are well aware of fact it was deliberate French policy to route all foreign trade via Saigon at high prices in order to benefit (a) Messageries Maritimes and (b) French commercial enterprises in port of Saigon. Cambodians are likewise aware of fact that for years French expended minimum of joint funds of three Associated States for development of Cambodia. There are few Cambodians who do not still resent fact that France, when it was “protecting power” here, amputated eastern provinces of Cambodia and incorporated them in Cochinchina. Finally, events of 1953 conclusively show Cambodians were in unanimous support of their King in securing independence from detested French.
In consequence, present stories of supposed idyllic relations between France and Cambodia belong to neo-mythology developed along banks of Seine but not of Mekong.
As for our own position here, it seems to me Embassy and USIS Paris could conveniently seek to refute canard that US, for some Machiavellian purpose, is seeking to oust honest French traders from Cambodia by mechanism of direct economic aid. To set record straight, as Department knows, Cambodia for past 2 years has been requesting US to provide direct aid and initiative came from this country, not US. Fact is that Cambodia and other two Associated [Page 409] States have been last victims of a mercantile colonial policy which became extinct so far as US was concerned in 18th Century. French have deliberately used Associated States as compulsory dumping ground for high cost exports and it is not useful in terms of US policy that we should now be blamed because at long last markets of Indochina are to be opened to free competition.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 651.51H/1–1155. Secret. Repeated to Paris, Vientiane, and Saigon.↩
- Dated December 24, 1954, Foreign Relations, 1952–1954, vol. XIII, Part 2, p. 2420.↩
- Dated December 29, 1954, not printed. (Department of State, Central Files, 951H.541/12–2954)↩
- See footnote 3, Document 176.↩
- Supra.↩