In the mid-1800s, Cambodia faced a dangerous situation. The kingdom was caught between two powerful neighbors: Siam (Thailand) to the west and Vietnam to the east. Both had been taking Cambodian territory for decades. Seeking protection, King Norodom signed a treaty with France in 1863, establishing Cambodia as a French protectorate. What began as protection soon became control that would last ninety years.
France promised to preserve Cambodia's monarchy and defend its borders. The French kept these promises, even helping recover some lost provinces from Thailand. However, they also took control of nearly all governmental functions. By 1897, the French resident general had assumed the king's powers to collect taxes, issue decrees, and appoint officials. Cambodian monarchs became ceremonial figureheads with little real authority.
The French developed Cambodia's economy to benefit France and French Indochina, not Cambodians. They built a railroad from Phnom Penh to the Thai border and some roads, but invested little in broader infrastructure or public services. Cambodia's fertile provinces became major rice exporters. French companies established rubber plantations. Cambodians paid the highest taxes per capita in all of Indochina and faced corvée service requiring up to ninety days per year of unpaid labor on public works projects. Many peasants fell into debt through usurious loans with interest rates of 100 to 200 percent, losing their land and becoming sharecroppers or landless workers.
The French colonial government created what historians call a "plural society." They preferred to hire Vietnamese immigrants for government positions and plantation labor rather than train Cambodians. Chinese merchants dominated commerce and banking. This arrangement left Cambodians shut out of the modern economy in their own country and created ethnic tensions that would persist long after independence.
Education remained extremely limited. Before 1953, Cambodia had only one high school for Cambodians, Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh. In 1931, just seven students graduated. Most Cambodians remained illiterate. Paradoxically, the small number who studied in France became the educated elite who would later challenge French rule. Among these foreign-educated Cambodians were both future independence leaders and, ironically, future leaders of the Khmer Rouge.
The path to independence accelerated during World War II. Japanese forces occupied Cambodia in 1941 while allowing French administrators to remain. In March 1945, as Japan's defeat approached, they overthrew French authority and encouraged young King Norodom Sihanouk to declare independence. This brief taste of sovereignty, though under Japanese control, awakened Cambodian aspirations. After Japan's surrender, France attempted to reimpose colonial rule, but nationalist movements gained strength. Through a combination of armed resistance by groups like the Khmer Issarak and diplomatic pressure from Sihanouk's "royal crusade for independence," Cambodia finally achieved full sovereignty on November 9, 1953.