The most recent Rose Café was not only very fun but also highly informative. Professor Andrew Mertha spoke about Cambodian history and the various Chinese influences found within. During the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s the militant group known as the Khmer Rouge basically kept Cambodia under its thumb with its brutal savagery combined with nationalist propaganda. Surprisingly, the Khmer Rouge was filled with child soldiers who committed acts of genocide. The picture shown during the event was quite shocking, one of the child fighters had a look of violence yet sadness in his eyes. I could tell that life had dealt him a crap hand, in his mind he probably though that he was doing the right thing. It’s the classic story of good intentions leading to bad consequences with history as his judge.
China supported the Khmer Rouge and thus played a huge role in the country’s economic growth. The comparisons to the Chinese cultural revolution were stark and shocking, one could even say that Cambodia took it a bit further.
My favorite part of the evening was a story that Professor Mertha told about how he found some rare Chinese documents in Cambodia that were very hard to decipher. He spent copious amounts of time trying, but he still made no progress. Funnily enough, a student of his connected him to one of the few people who could make sense of the documents and all the pieces finally came together.
History is so interesting, and I don’t know much about Cambodian history, but it sounds like this cafe series was very informative! It’s fascinating to read about the differences in human behavior as a function of time–we are all still people and ultimately still have the same biological functions (this point can be argued, but in a broad sense, I think it’s accurate). However, we act so differently and find different things socially acceptable over the course of even just a couple hundred years. Your point about child soldiers is absolutely tragic, and unfortunately similar things still happen to this day. I think it’s great that we’re being given opportunities to engage in learning the histories of different cultures because without understanding our past, I don’t think we’d ever be able to progress as global society.