Tonight at the Rose Café, Professor Mertha from the government department talked about his research on Cambodia and its relationship with China. He began with a brief history of Cambodia which was useful for me as I’m not very familiar with the history of the Southeast Asia region. He described Cambodia as being in a continuing cycle of violence throughout the 20^th century, beginning with the U.S. bombing during the Vietnam War in which more bombs were dropped on Cambodia than were dropped during all of WWII. After this violence, Cambodia was thrown into civil war and then subjected to systematic genocide under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. Professor Mertha’s research has focused on exploring the ways in which China interacted with this regime. He explained that the argument of his book Brothers in Arms is that the Chinese bureaucracy was too disorganized and fragmented to have a substantial impact on Cambodia at that time.

I was especially interested in the part of Professor Mertha’s talk in which he described the difficulties he faced while trying to conduct research for his book. While working in the Cambodia National Archives, he discovered a collection of Chinese documents from the Khmer regime labeled top secret, however he was unable to decipher what they meant. Eventually he had to rely on his senior honors thesis advisee’s grandmother who had worked for the Chinese government and put him in contact with people in China who would agree to explain the documents. As I prepare for final papers, I will keep this story in mind as a reminder that my research is not nearly as complicated as it could be!