A história de Portugal e do Cambodja Parte I

1. Introduction

The Khmer people were among the first in Southeast Asia to adopt religious ideas and political institutions from India and to establish centralised kingdoms covering comprehensive large territories. The earliest known kingdom in the area, Funan, flourished from around the first to the sixth century A.D. It was succeeded by Chenla, which controlled large areas of modern Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. The golden age of Khmer civilisation, was the time from the 9th to 13th century, when the kingdom of Kambuja, which gave the name Kampuchea, or Cambodia, which according to sources, derived from the Portuguese name of Cambodja, had governed large territories from its capital in the region of Angkor in western Cambodia. The Portuguese were the first recorded Europeans to do Christian missionary works in Cambodia. They arrived in Cambodia as early as in the 15th century and were very active in the Cambodian affairs.

2. The Prominence of Portuguese People in Cambodian Society

The Cambodian-Portuguese connections dated back the mid 1400s when Portuguese traders and missionaries first set foots in Cambodia. But it was in the 19th century that the Portuguese have played a very significant role in the Cambodian society. Many descendants of Portuguese traders and missionaries took many leading roles in the shaping of the Cambodian affairs. The Diaz and the Moneiro played an important part in the Cambodian society of the 19th century. Constantine Monteiro, on a mission to Singapore in 1850, wrote an article on Cambodia titled "notes to accompany map of Cambodia" which was published in the journal of the "Indian Archipelago and Eastern India" in 1851. Another Portuguese wrote "Lettre sur le Cambodge" which was translated into the "Revue Maritime et Coloniale" in June 1865. Another Portuguese, Col de Monteiro (1839-1908) had become King Norodom's secretary and the Kralahom or the minister of the navy. His father, Bernardos Ros de Monteiro, who was later one of the major mandarins of king Norodom, had accompanied Father Bouillevauv when he visited Angkor Wat in 1850 in which he described Angkor Wat as "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world." Col de Monteiro's grandfather had come to Cambodia on a missionary works in the early nineteenth century and decided to settle in Cambodia permanently and played an important part in Cambodian politics at the time. The De Monteiro descendants have played very prominent roles in Cambodian politics up until the mid 1950s. Some of their descendants have served as ministers during Prince Sihanouk's rule. Today, many of the De Monteiro Cambodian descendants have spread across the continents. Some are still living in Cambodia and some have settled in some western countries, especially in Australia where some of the De Monteiros have settled after escaping war-torn Cambodia in the 1970s and 1980s.

Texto de Khmerization Junior autor do blogue http://www.ki-media.blogspot.com/ e www.Khmerization.blogspot.com