The Collapse of the Khmer Empire

Thomas Van Damme (00906176) - 2nd year Bachelor in Archaeology Ecological Archaeology - UGhent: academic year 2010-2011

The Collapse of the Khmer Empire

Introduction In 802 CE Jayavarman II managed to unify different chiefdoms in Southeast Asia into a single kingdom. The establishment of his capital Hariharalaya in the greater Angkor area (present day Siem Reap Province in northwest Cambodia) marks the beginning of the Angkorean period of Khmer history. In total 27 kings of Angkor would reign from seven successive capitals in the region from the 9th to 15th century CE (McCullough 2010). At the height of its power, under great rulers such as Suryavarman II (1113 - 1150 CE) who ordered the construction of Angkor Wat (the worlds largest religious building) and Jayavarman VII (1181 - 1218 CE) who commissioned the building of the Angkor Thom complex, the Khmer empire encompassed not only modern day Cambodia but also large parts of central Thailand and southern Vietnam (Stone 2006). Its capital housed 750 000 inhabitants (Dayton 2007; Lewis 2010) and was the worlds most extensive preindustrial low-density urban complex (Evans 2007). The Foundations of Angkor For most of Angkors history the kings power was legitimized by the Hindu Devarja rite, in which the king was worshipped as divine and his cult, as well as that of his ancestors, was the main focus of religious life. Other rulers adopted popular Mahayana Buddhism and didnt consider themselves divine, but focused on obtaining merit to achieve nirvana through construction of roads, water infrastructure and hospitals for their subjects. However, in both religious ideologies it was of paramount importance that the king built impressive temples in order to obtain and maintain social supremacy over his competitors (McCullough 2010). To pay for these massive projects the rulers depended on an effective decentralized templebased tax system: local village temples collected the taxes in their region, used them to pay their own staff, and then funneled the rest of the revenue back to the central treasury. Such temple-estates were established by prosperous families who, by constructing these temples, assured that their descendants would hold the lucrative monopoly on the kings tax collection in the area. The system led to swift geographical and economic expansion of the kingdom as elites hurried to expand and deforest (for farming) their taxable lands (McCullough 2010). Though monsoon climates tend to be unfavorable for sustaining big empires, Angkors location near the fertile flood plains of the Tonle Sap Lake was ideal, since it allowed for several rice harvests a year. Then, as the population grew, Angkor adapted to increasing strain on its agricultural resources by gradually evolving into a hydraulic city based on a complex water management network (Evans 2007). In essence water from the Puok and Roluos Rivers was channeled into immense reservoirs (termed baray) that could store vast amounts of water for irrigation in the dry season and prevent uncontrolled flooding in the monsoon season (Figure 1) (Kummu 2009; Stone 2006). Four to five harvests a year and the extraordinarily fish-rich Tonle Sap Lake generated food surpluses which in turn made it possible to withdraw workers and slaves from the rice fields and put them to work on building projects or construction and maintenance of the water management network (McCullough 2010).

Figure 1: Water management network at Angkor (Stone 2006). -

The Collapse of Angkor This combination of effective tax collection, harnessing of water supply (and thus a high and reliable agricultural output) and a powerful ruler legitimized by religion, formed a firm foundation on which the Khmer empire could build and flourish for over 400 years. After the rule of Jayavarman VII (1218 CE) however, the kingdom fell into steady decline, surviving only in the shadow of its former greatness until the 15th century, before disappearing entirely. It should be noted that though the Khmer empire disintegrated, its majestic temples were never forgotten, and sites such as Angkor Wat were still centers of Buddhist worship when discovered by Portuguese adventurers in the 16th century (Buckley 2010; Freeman 1999). Frustratingly, since no stone temples were built after the 13th century, the decline of the kingdom is accompanied by a complete lack of historical inscriptions at Angkor from the 14th to 17th century (Lewis 2010; Stone 2006). This hiatus in historical data has led to a lot of contemplation on the reasons of Angkors demise. While early research focused on singular theories, recent studies seem to agree that a combination of different factors was responsible for the final collapse of complex civilization at Angkor. The 1431 CE invasion of Angkor by the Siamese kingdom of Ayuddhaya (Buckley 2010) is documented in Siamese annals (Stone 2006) and widely quoted as the reason for Angkors demise (Grahame 2007; Lewis 2010). Aside from looting the treasury the invaders would have liberated many slaves, resulting in a loss of labor and tax income for the Khmer capital. Still, it is known that the empire had suffered similar conflicts and even civil war in earlier periods, but had always managed to recover (McCullough 2010). So why was it unable to recover this time, and what left it vulnerable to foreign invasion in the first place?
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Another theory is that an overly ambitious building program by Jayavarman VII emptied the kingdoms treasury, leaving it unequipped to deal with arising problems. Considering his Bayon temple was gilded at the time, this factor indeed needs to be taken into account as a likely contributor to Angkors final collapse (McCullough 2010; Stone 2006). Thirdly many researchers associate the decline of Angkor with the conversion to Theravada Buddhism at the end of the 13th century. This new ideology promoted social equality and unlike the Hindu Devarja rite or Mahayana Buddhism it did not require worship of higher gods, making imposing building programs redundant. Consequently the Khmer kings could no longer legitimize their supremacy and with the kings power waning, local elites stopped contributing to the central treasury but instead privatized the lands they taxed (Hagesteijn 1987; Lewis 2010; McCullough 2010; Stone 2006). A more recent hypothesis is that due to a combination of reasons, the Angkor water management network had started to degrade. The first problems were simple engineering mistakes. For example the East Baray was hardly deeper than the canal that fed it, so that the water level in the reservoir was always shallow and as a consequence water quickly evaporated in the dry season (Stone 2006). Another mistake was the diversion of the naturally sinuous Puok River into the artificially straight Siem Reap Channel: the straight flow of water resulted in higher flow velocities and thus more erosion, eventually resulting in down-cutting of the channel to the point where it had difficulty diverting to the baray, which was at ground level (Kummu 2009). A related problem occurred when geological uplift of the crust similarly caused higher flow velocity and thus down-cutting of all the (even naturally sinuous) rivers feeding into the baray. In summary the rivers could no longer supply the reservoirs with water in the dry season, at the time when it was most needed. Furthermore, cutting of forests to make room for farmland left soils vulnerable to erosion, and studies have shown that major parts of canals were buried with eroded sediment in single heavy monsoon seasons. Due to the sheer size and delicate balance of these waterworks it became increasingly difficult to compensate or repair the defects, and their malfunctioning essentially left the city without water supply for bad monsoon years (Stone 2006). Lastly, a study conducted in 2009 has demonstrated that also climate played an important role in the demise of Angkor. The team compared three tree-ring climate reconstructions (MHS, MCC and BDNP), two speleothem records (Dandak and Wanxiang) and several historical documents (SL and TH) spread throughout Southeast Asia (Figure 2). All of these records confirm the same theory: Angkor experienced multidecadal periods of severe drought in the mid to late fourteenth century and early fifteenth century (Figure 3), which coincide with the gradual desertion of the Khmer capital. These weak monsoons were interspersed by unusually strong monsoon seasons, which further advanced the sedimentation of Angkors canals. This extended period of climate anomalies can be correlated to variability in the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature, influence of the El Nio-Southern Oscillation and a 5 southward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone at the time of transition from the Medieval Climate Anomaly into the Little Ice Age (Buckley 2010). As a result of the increasingly defect water infrastructure and the subsequent inability to deal with droughts, an economy based on traditional rice production was no longer viable. Instead focus shifted to (maritime) trade and thus cities closer to the sea or Mekong River, such as the present day capital of Phnom Penh, became the new centers of wealth (Buckley 2010; Hagesteijn 1987; McCullough 2010; Stone 2006).
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Figure 2: Data for climate reconstruction across Southeast Asia (Buckley 2010). Figure 3: Paleoclimate records of Southeast Asia (Buckley 2010).

Conclusion It is clear that not one, but rather a multitude of different factors contributed to the collapse of this once great civilization. Probably interrelated infrastructural, economic, and geopolitical stresses had made Angkor vulnerable to climate change and limited its capacity to adapt to changing circumstances (Buckley 2010). However, research on the extensive site is far from over and it is likely that further interdisciplinary studies of, amongst others, the ecology of the Tonle Sap Lake, changes in vegetation and Chinese trade records will further increase our understanding of the different processes that led to the demise of Angkor (Kummu 2009; Stone 2006).

References Buckley BM, Anchukaitis KJ, Penny D, Fletcher R, Cook ER, Sano M, Nam LC, Wichienkeeo A, Minh TT, Hong TM (2010). Climate as a contributing factor in the demise of Angkor, Cambodia. PNAS. Early Edition 107, pp.1-5. Dayton L (2007). Climate change, over-building doomed Khmer kingdom [online]. [Accessed 13 June 2011]. Available from: <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/climatechange-over-building-doomed-khmer-kingdom/story-e6frg6so-1111113155252>. Evans D, Pottier C, Fletcher R, Hensley S, Tapley I, Milne A, Barbetti M (2007). A comprehensive archaeological map of the world's largest preindustrial settlement complex at Angkor, Cambodia. PNAS. 104, pp.14277-14282. Freeman M, Jacques C (1999). Ancient Angkor. 1st. ed. Bangkok: Asia Books. Grahame D, Yeo M, Chua J (eds). (2007). Cultures of the World - Cambodia. New York: Times Publishing Limited. Hagesteijn R (1987). The Angkor State: Rise, Fall and In Between. In: Claessen HJM, van de Velde P, (eds). Early State Dynamics, Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp154-169. Kummu M (2009). Water management in Angkor: Human impacts on hydrology and sediment transportation. Journal of Environmental Management. 90, pp.1413-1421. Lewis J (2010). The Riddle of Ancient Angkor [online]. [Accessed 13 June 2011]. Available from: <http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/ancient-angkor-wat-climate-change-impact0836/1/>. McCullough K (2010). The emergence and ultimate decline of the Khmer Empire was paralleled with development and subsequent change in religious ideology, together with infrastructure that supported agriculture. EDAS8003A Assignment 1. Stone R (2006). The End of Angkor. Science. 311, pp.1364-1368.

Front page image: Miller DM (2009). A statue at Angkor Thom [online]. [Accessed 16 June 2011]. Available from: <http://www.mercerspace.com/article/69907-faces+stone+ankgor+statues+and+brighton+ beach+russians+populate+photos+gallery+14+exhibit>.