The cyclos, street food and shophouses of 1950s Phnom Penh

This collection of archive images depicts Phnom Penh in April 1953, offering an insight into Cambodia on the brink of independence, a country yet to be touched by the heady development of the 60s or the tragedy of the 70s.

The year is 1953 – the month April. The French Protectorate of Cambodia, still under fading colonial authority of French Indochina, is still six months from the triumphant 9 November return of King Norodom Sihanouk and the de-facto establishment of the First Kingdom of Cambodia.
Phnom Penh would transform from the low-lying Chinese-style shophouses and French colonial structures seen in these images, to one of the best examples of creative urban planning in the region. But while an inconsequential and fruitless sojourn from an academic perspective, it would be in the French capital in the early 1950s that the stage would be set for Cambodia’s most tragic period over two decades later, as Sâr mingled among leftist Khmer intellectual circles, frequented by the likes of Khieu Samphan and Leng Sary – the future senior leadership of the Khmer Rouge.
Next door in Vietnam, the Anti-French Resistance War was reaching its climax at the time of these images in mid-1953, with it was fast-dawning on the colonial forces that the war with the Viet Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh, would not easily be won.

This article was written by ALASTAIR MCCREADY

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