Modern Asian Studies 32, 4 (1998), pp. 849–890. 1998 Cambridge University PressPrinted in the United Kingdom

Borders on the Fantastic: Mimesis, Violence,and Landscape at the Temple of Preah Vihear

P. CUASAY

University of Washington

Peace based on a fallacy is not for the living. The living must and shall demand thetruth, for such is the way of nations, and such is the way of man.—Seni Pramoj,speaking at the World Court, March 27, 1962 (Pleadings, 564)

On 15 June 1962, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) pro-nounced judgment on a dispute between Cambodia, formerly acolony of France, and Thailand, formerly called Siam, a neighboringkingdom which had never been formally colonized. The disputeregarded territorial sovereignty over the area of an ancientBrahmanic temple named Preah Vihear (following the Khmer lan-guage of Cambodia) or Phra Viharn (following Thai language). TheTemple is perched high on a spur of the Dangrek mountain chainwhich roughly forms the boundary between both countries. North ofthe Dangrek lies the Khorat Plateau of Northeast Thailand, whileto the south the Temple affords a magnificent view of the forestedCambodian plain below. The judgment was peculiar in that it reliedupon absence to startling effect. Applying the principle qui tacet con-sentire videtur si loqui debuisset ac potuisset (Judgment, 23) [He who keepssilent is held to consent if he must and can speak—ibid., 96], ICJheld that Thailand’s failure to protest the inaccuracy of a map pur-porting to reflect the watershed line between the two states, and thusby the Treaty of 1904 the international boundary between them,constituted tacit acceptance of the map line as the line establishedby treaty. The effects of this reasoning were as follows: (a) a grossrepresentation, a 1:200,000 scale map that made a considerableerror in placing the watershed, was held to fix the boundary, sup-planting the treaty text, which specifies a physical fact, the water-shed line, as the boundary; (b) concrete acts of sovereignty on theground were largely dismissed as being ‘exclusively the acts of local,provincial authorities’ (Judgment, 30) while mere inferences aboutbehavior taken to be absence of official protest received legal force;and (c) the ‘general political conditions existing in Asia at thisperiod,’ (Judgment, 128) i.e., the enormous facts of French colonial-0026–749X/98/$7.50+$0.10

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ism, were ignored. The response to the judgment in Thailand wasincredulity and outrage. The World Court reasoning was seen, in thewords of Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman, as a ‘miscarriage ofjustice,’ while other ‘Officials contacted were puzzled that the courtbased its judgment on a map, considered actually only a roughsketch.’ (Bangkok Post, June 18, 1962)

Looking back on the oral pleadings and the judgment togetherwith the dissenting opinions, what seems truly strange is that if ICJ,in resolving the dispute with a map, hoped to uphold the stabilityand finality of conventional agreements between States rather thancapitulate to achievements of sheer conquering force, then the basisfor its judgment ran exactly in reverse. Dramatizing the failure toprotest, the World Court seemed to announce not an end to violence,but a need to perpetually anticipate it, to respond with unmistakablevigor to any threat against sovereignty, real or imagined. Envisioningthis kind of fortress mentality, where every uncertainty in repres-entation might open a credibility gap and every silence might be adoorway to danger, the World Court of 1962 may appear to us todayas a haunted Hague, encircled by the ghosts of the Cold War. Butalready at that time, other ghosts were conjured up during the caseof Preah Vihear. Acts of the delimitation commissioners of 1905–1908 and their dead presidents were scrutinized for their effect onthe Thai–Cambodian border, and the meeting of a dead prince anda dead archaeologist became fraught with consequence. And haunt-ing for its absence among these ghosts of colonialism was any men-tion of the contemporary Holy Men’s Rebellion that so preoccupiedthe populace of this borderland which, before consolidation ofmodern nation states, had been a largely autonomous collection oftributory principalities in the Khorat marginal highlands, an areathe Siamese Kings called Forest Khmer Domains [huamuang khamenpadong in Thai]. This paper is a route map to these mutual hauntings,as I brush international law against the grain on a sightseeing tourof the many sites at which this border’s history, in words Counselfor Thailand used in the case, ‘borders on the fantastic.’ (Pleadings,621)

Picturing Absence

Let us see, first of all, how the court read a gift of souvenir photographs.In the written memorials and oral pleadings, both Cambodia andThailand highlighted one event from 1930 as a clear display of the

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meaning of their conduct. It was precisely this event which ICJ alsospotlighted in 1962 as a clear example of their reasoning.

In this connection, much the most significant episode consisted of the visitpaid to the Temple in 1930 by Prince Damrong, formerly Minister of theInterior, and at this time President of the Royal Institute of Siam. . . . Thevisit was part of an archaeological tour made by the Prince with the permis-sion of the King of Siam, and it clearly had a quasi-official character. Whenthe Prince arrived at Preah Vihear, he was officially received there by theFrench Resident for the adjoining Cambodian province, on behalf of theResident Superior, with the French flag flying. The Prince could not possiblyhave failed to see the implications of a reception of this character. A cleareraffirmation of title on the French Indo-Chinese side can scarcely beimagined. It demanded a reaction. Thailand did nothing. Furthermore,when Prince Damrong on his return to Bangkok sent the French residentsome photographs of the occasion, he used language which seems to admitthat France, through her Resident, had acted as the host country.

. . . Looking at the incident as a whole, it appears to have amounted to atacit recognition by Siam of the sovereignty of Cambodia (under FrenchProtectorate) over Preah Vihear, through a failure to react in any way, onan occasion that called for a reaction in order to affirm or preserve title inthe face of an obvious rival claim. (Judgment, 30–31)

In a dissenting opinion, Wellington Koo of Nationalist China madeout an entirely different picture and ultimately concluded the ICJreasoning was ‘strained and unreal.’ (Judgment, 98)

The incident of a visit of Prince Damrong to the Temple of Preah Vihear inJanuary 1930 and the presence of the French Resident of the neighbouringCambodian province of Kompong Thom on the scene in his official uniformwith decorations and the appearance of the French flag on a pole in frontof his own pavilion is regarded as particularly significant. But the facts aresimple and do not support the claim of significance assigned to it. ThePrince was no longer Minister of the Interior; he was President of the RoyalInstitute of Siam. . . . He made the trip . . . in the latter capacity, accompan-ied by his three daughters and a suite of officials. The French Resident hadwith him his assistant and the noted French archaeologist Henri Parment-ier. When the parties met on the Temple grounds, speeches of welcomeand thanks were exchanged and toasts were drunk. The Resident said hehad come to present the compliments of the Superior Resident and his ownto the Prince for his ‘reputation as a sincere friend of France and her sub-jects and proteges’ and also as a well-known archaeologist. No allusion wasmade by the French Resident to any question about the territorial sover-eignty of the Temple, though Parmentier, speaking as a fellow archaeologistand extolling the fame of the Prince for his interest in archaeology, referredto the Temple as ‘another monument of our Cambodia.’ The Prince, in hisreply, said that ‘he had come to see the Temple and had nothing to do withpolitics.’

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According to a statement of his daughter who accompanied him on thevisit, he suggested to the French officer ‘to get out of his uniform.’ Thedisplay of his national flag by a foreign official, even by a private Occidental,was not an uncommon sight in an Asiatic country during that epoch; it mayor may not have displeased the Prince. There was no clear cause for thePrince to make a protest at the time or to ask his Government to lodge onein Bangkok, though in an affidavit of one of his daughters who was with thePrince during this visit, it is stated that he privately considered the hoistingof the French flag at the place of their meeting and the donning of hisofficial uniform by the French officer to be ‘impudent.’ The despatch of aletter of thanks and some photographs taken during his visit by PrinceDamrong to the French Minister for transmission to the French authoritiesin Indo-China meant no more than a customary act of Oriental courtesy.In a word, the incident viewed in the light of available evidence and thethen prevailing conditions in Siam—and in fact in other parts of Asia—didnot have the meaning and significance sought to be inferred from it.

. . . Even if this presumption [that the French presence asserted a sovereignclaim to the Temple] is correct, it does not necessarily follow that [Siam]should not have waited for a more propitious occasion to make [a protest]than in the actual circumstances prevailing at that time. The reason why‘he did not ask the Government to lodge a protest’ was eloquently statedby his daughter, Princess Phun Phitsamai Diskul, who went with him duringthe visit to the Temple, to be as follows:

‘It was generally known at the time that we only give the French anexcuse to seize more territory by protesting. Things had been like thatsince they came into the river Chao Phraya with their gunboats and theirseizure of Chantaburi.’–

In view of the history of the relations between Siam and French Indo-China. . . the Princess’s explanation seems natural and reasonable. It was a situ-ation not peculiar to Siam. It was, generally speaking, the common experi-ence of most Asiatic States in their intercourse with the Occidental Powersduring this period of colonial expansion. (Judgment, 89–91)

Koo’s interpretation was, however, a minority view. Why did ICJvote nine to three that Preah Vihear belonged to Cambodia on theargument that the absence of protest constitutes acceptance of amap line deviating both from the text of the treaty and the facts ofgeography? It seems ICJ was impressed by the Cambodian view ofPrince Damrong’s visit because photographs, souvenirs the Princesent to the French along with a thank-you note, were viewed as show-ing acquiescence to the display of French sovereignty. As the donorof these souvenirs, Prince Damrong, according to the Maussian(1924) view of gift exchange, should appear superior to the receiver.However, a souvenir photograph is, from one perspective, a mererepresentation of an actual event, so the souvenir as gift refers back

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to an original moment. If this original moment were to be perceivedas the first gift, then the souvenir would become the imperfectreturn. The souvenir photograph, on the hypothesis, is thus a giftthat destroys its own status as the more original and prestigiousoffering, a gift that reduces its donor to the abnegation of a sacrifier(see Mauss, 1899). But this logic depends on the crucial transitionfrom seeing the souvenir as the original gift to seeing it as an imper-fect counter-gift. At stake therefore is the status of a photograph.Is the photograph itself the object bestowed through ‘a customaryact of Oriental courtesy?’ Or is the photograph just a parasitic copy,a reproduction of an original scene? And even if the latter weregranted, on what basis is the original scene recognized as the firstgift, the gift that calls forth the souvenir as a counter-gift irremedi-ably counterfeit, or debased?

However habitual it may be to view a photograph as a copy of aprior scene, the disappearance of the photograph itself is accomp-lished by its positioning within this legal case. The photograph ofPrince Damrong at Preah Vihear is a piece of evidence in the Inter-national Court of Justice, a world court from which there is noappeal. Evidence must be seen in the eyes of the law and consideredonly with regard to what it represents, not what it is. By beingtreated as evidence, the photograph itself fades from view, to bereplaced by what it represents, some purchase on the legal facts ofthe case. Yet this effect of the legalistic context, like the photographitself, also fades from view by disavowing its status as an effect. Thepower of the court to determine how a photograph must be perceivedeffortlessly obscures itself behind the ‘natural’ power of photographsto represent reality. Because the technology of the camera is natural-ized and serves as a taken-for-granted modern substitute for eye-witnesses, the court manages to overlook its own determination ofthe evidence in the very act of ‘just looking’ at photographs. Putanother way, the camera cannot lie but it can misdirect. The court,constrained to direct its attention to what the photograph shows, isat the same time misdirected because it overlooks the photographitself as a gift object.

But if the gift must be misrecognized as evidence for facts thatlie outside the frame of the photograph’s existence as a gift, thisstill does not require a viewer to interpret those facts as the donationby France of a first gift which elicited souvenirs from Thailand ascounter-gifts. In fact, a photograph cannot show diachronic succes-sion, it can only show signs of relative status at a particular time.

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To ascribe first donor status to the party who displays greater rela-tive prestige is only possible through remembering what the require-ment to view photographs as evidence has just forgotten, namelythat the giver of a gift is in a higher position than the recipient.Having forgotten that a Thai Prince was the giver of souvenirs, thecourt now seeks in the souvenir photographs signs that would indic-ate which nation is higher, Thailand or Cambodia, for by a reasoningjust now recalled, whoever is higher must be the first donor. Thusdo symbols of power become not merely its legitimating ideology butits crucial basis. The theatrical setting—the French flag flutteringon a secluded mountaintop, the decorated French uniform glitteringin the Oriental sun—is heightened through the play-within-a-playstaging of evidence before the judges of the world.

The force of that theatricality suggests that the photographs hadto reflect an acknowledgment of French sovereignty, otherwise theFrench would be in danger of appearing inappropriate and out ofplace among their own symbols. The French are caught in a rivalrywith their own regalia that implies a doubly threatening image: boththe flimsy theoreticality of colonial grandeur and the disturbingresemblance between French officials and Oriental potentates in acommon reliance on quaint symbols. Both would make a mockery oftheir mimicry of themselves (see Bhabha, 1984). Sir Frank Soskice,former Attorney General of Great Britain, alluded to this threat(perhaps with English relish in French discomfort) in defendingPrince Damrong’s lack of protest.

No doubt he could have taken all sorts of ridiculous steps quite out of keep-ing with the triviality of the occasion. Prince Damrong, as Professor Reutersaid, had a sense of humour. Professor Reuter omitted to refer to the onecourse which a sensible person with a sense of humour would have taken andwhich Prince Damrong did adopt, that is to say, to ignore what he regardedas a piece of upstart arrogance. It would not be the first time in the historyof mankind that a man who held the positions of dignity which Prince Dam-rong had held had chosen to disregard an indiscretion on the part of acomparatively junior, swollen headed official. (emphasis mine)

Really, the ownership of Phra Viharn cannot depend upon trumpery incid-ents of this sort. He sent photographs and a polite and amiable letter ofthanks as an indication that so far as he was concerned no significance wasattached to what he nevertheless undoubtedly regarded as a piece of insol-ence. (Pleadings, 636)

To recognize the gift of souvenir photographs, as such, would thusentail revealing the ‘trumpery’ of French colonialism in the person

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of a ‘junior, swollen headed official’ indulging in ‘upstart arrogance.’The only way out of this dilemma is to mis-take the gift for a repay-ment, a kind of tribute, and ultimately an admission of beingindebted to the hospitality of the French as sovereign authoritiesover the Temple.

A Gift for Nothing

The French Resident and Henri Parmentier received gifts of photo-graphs in 1930, but in 1908, it was officials of the Siamese Govern-ment, among them Prince Damrong, who accepted the gift of a seriesof maps of the frontier regions common to Siam and French Indo-China. Among them was the map that came to be called Annex I,the map on which Cambodia rested her claim to the Temple of PreahVihear. The prominent Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary ofState, and at the time of this case adviser to President Kennedy forNATO affairs, led Counsel for Cambodia in rendering its version ofthe reception of these maps. So effective was this speech of March21 that a more muted and compressed rendition is virtually repeatedin the text of the judgment.

May I ask the Court to look once more at the scene in Bangkok in the latesummer and fall of 1908. The town is inundated with copies of the Dangrekmap—that is, the Annex I map—along with the other ten maps publishedat the same time. Practically everyone in town receives copies. The Ministerof Foreign Affairs receives 44 copies. Surely he must have been interested.There are eight or ten former members of the Siamese Delimitation Com-mission. Each of them receives a copy. Even the Siamese legations inLondon, Berlin, St. Petersburg and Washington received them—two copieseach. Then the French Minister in Bangkok, thinking that the town wasnot sufficiently supplied, in September 1908 asked for, and presumablyreceived, four more sets.

Why does M. Rolin [a French lawyer defending Thailand] suppose theseSiamese wanted the maps, including the Annex I map? Did they want themto look at? Oh no, said M. Rolin, they were too busy for that. They hadother things to do. To go to the Royal Ballet, perhaps. But suppose theCommissioners didn’t look at them, what about the Siamese Government?What about the Minister of Foreign Affairs? He received 44 copies, whereasthe Commissioners only had one copy each . . .

Apparently not one person in the Siamese Government thought even oftaking a peek at the maps, or of drafting a note for the Siamese Minister

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of Foreign Affairs to send to Paris—which might have read something likethis:

‘We have received your kind gift of 44 sets of unilateral maps preparedat Paris, representing, in spite of their title, only the view of the FrenchGovernment and the French Commissioners. We must note, further, thatno frontier in the Dangrek was ever agreed upon by the Mixed Commis-sion, although one of the maps shows a frontier there. This obviouslycannot be considered as binding upon Siam. With renewed expressionsof my highest consideration, etc., etc.’ . . .

Actually, someone in the Siamese Government did have the time and inter-est, if not to write a letter, at least to speak to the French Minister atBangkok; and the Minister wrote a letter. The Siamese official in questionwas none other than our old friend, Prince Damrong, who was then Ministerof the Interior and who, 25 years later (so Thailand presently relates) wouldbe busy exercising sovereignty over Preah Vihear.

What did Prince Damrong say to the French Ambassador. Did he protest?Did he point out that the Dangrek frontier was merely a figment of theFrench officer’s imagination? I shall not keep the Court in suspense. PrinceDamrong asked for 15 more copies of the maps. And his reason? Heexplained that he wanted to give these maps to the Siamese provincialofficials . . . Could it have been that Prince Damrong wanted the Siameseprovincial authorities to have copies of the map so that they could tell wherethe frontier was not? (Pleadings, 454–455)

Acheson assumes that the primary aim of these maps and the firstthing anyone looking at them would do is to trace the boundaries ofone’s country to make sure it’s all there, nothing missing. Thai his-torian Thongchai Winidjakul (1994) has shown how mapping Siamindeed resulted in the construction of the ‘geo-body,’ and arguedthat the Bangkok elite and colonial powers worked together to cap-ture territory in grid lines. Thus the Minutes of the first MixedDelimitation Commission, a body composed of French and Thaimembers and charged with tracing out the boundaries as defined bythe Treaty of 1904, reveal that both sides desired to obtain maps ofthe frontier. But they also show the desire was much more generalthan, and unconnected with, the particular delimitation task of theCommission.

In the meeting of 29 November 1905, the President of the Frenchsection, Colonel Bernard, thanked his Siamese colleagues for leavingthe technical work and surveying to French cartographers. GeneralMom Chatidej Udom replied to Bernard saying ‘that by leaving itto the French Commission to draw up the map of the frontier region,

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the Siamese Government had indeed wished to show that it hadcomplete confidence in the French officers.’ (cited in Judgment, 81)Then on 17 January 1906, Bernard proposed that French officersshould survey further than the immediate vicinity of the border ‘soas to give a more complete map of the frontier region. At that momentthere was no satisfactory map in existence and it would be useful forthe two countries to have’ (cited in Judgment, 81; emphasis mine).Sir Percy Spender of Australia added in his dissenting opinion thatthe French Commission was engaged in work which went far beyondthe work of delimiting frontiers. In Colonel Bernard’s report of 14April 1908 to the French Minister of the colonies, it is clear thatthis work included ‘ethnographical research and cartographical work.Attached to his report, in addition to all the Minutes of the MixedCommission, were a number of reports by different officers attachedto his Mission’ (Judgment, 140). Wellington Koo concluded fromall this that the ‘requested map was a separate matter not directlyconnected with the work of delimitation . . . and, as such, when itwas made, certainly it could not be regarded as constituting or imply-ing any binding obligation on Thailand as to the character of themap to be made’ (Judgement, 81). Thus when the maps of variousfrontiers were transmitted to Bangkok, it should not be consideredas the delivery of maps that the Siamese Commissioners requestedand were now called upon to accept or reject, but merely as thedistribution of a ‘general map of the whole frontier region’ that ‘hadformed the subject of an exchange of friendly remarks between thePresidents of the two national Commissions.’ (Judgment, 82)

Sir Percy Spender picked up the story of how the map series,including Annex I, did arrive in Bangkok. In July of 1907,

Colonel Bernard, then in France, sought the approval of the French ForeignMinister of the Colonies [to publish the maps, and] requested provision offunds for that purpose. The decision to publish the maps was made by theMinister; Siam was not consulted about it. The printing and publication ofthe map did not follow, as a matter of course, from the operations of theMixed Commission in 1905–1907. Ultimately, funds were authorized forpublication of the ‘Bernard Commission map’ to be provided out of thebudget of Indo-China. (Judgment, 126)

1,000 copies were ordered. 700 were for French Ministry of theColonies for despatch to Indo-China. 100 were for sale by the pub-lisher. 50 for the Siamese Government ‘were handed personallyto the Siamese Minister in Paris without any covering letter. . . .No comment from Siam was at any time sought. Indeed, none I

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[Spender] am satisfied was expected’ (ibid.). In these circumstances,wrote Wellington Koo,

It was certainly not unusual for Prince Damrong to have expressed hisappreciation upon receiving an extra copy of the whole series from theFrench Minister who obviously did it as a special act of courtesy. Nor isit difficult to understand that he should have requested more copies fordistribution to the Siamese provincial authorities, especially when it isrecalled that at the time Siam did not yet have a good modern map showingthe whole frontier region between Siam and French Indo-China, and thatthe Siamese Government had previously requested the President of theFrench Commission to have one made by the French topographical officers.(Judgment, 84)

In this aspect of the case, there was a fundamental misapprehen-sion regarding the gift of French maps which were developed out ofa mutual desire for general maps, in response to a friendly request,and distributed as an act of courtesy. Dean Acheson and another ofCambodia’s lawyers, Paul Reuter (identified by the Bangkok Post aslegal adviser to the French Foreign Ministry), succeeded in por-traying the passive reception of the maps as acquiescence. For them,acceptance of the maps created an implied conventional agreementbetween Siam and France to the effect that the map lines reflectand supersede the treaty terms. But as Sir Percy Spender observed,‘It can scarcely be contended that the act of France in delivering toSiam copies of a map which were at the same time delivered by herto third parties evidenced any intention on her part to enter into aninternational engagement’ (Judgment, 139). How, then, could theWorld Court hold that ‘The map (whether in all respects accurateby reference to the true watershed line or not) was accepted by theparties in 1908. . . . The Parties at that time adopted an interpreta-tion of the treaty settlement which caused the map line, in so faras it may have departed from the line of watershed, to prevail overthe relevant clause of the treaty’? (Judgment, 34).

It may help to recall the threat posed by Prince Damrong’s sou-venir photographs while following Sir Frank Soskice’s oral argumentagainst the notion that publishing maps is an assertion ofsovereignty.

Thailand, on the other hand, so Professor Reuter said, did nothing. Shenever exercised sovereignty; although she knew of the French assertion ofsovereignty, she never put forward her own claim; until at last, after 50years of silence and inaction, she claimed Phra Viharn in 1954, when allthe people who had taken part in the events 1904–1908 were dead and theCambodian archives had been lost . . .

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Let us consider whether such indeed are the facts. France, we are told,asserted her sovereignty in 1908. How? By publishing Annex I. A country,I submit, does not assert sovereignty over a tract of territory simply bypublishing a map. A tract of territory is not something abstract or intan-gible. It is susceptible of physical acts of possession, and no assertion ofsovereignty over it is effective in law unless it includes such physical acts.. . . What did France do on the spot in 1908 to assert her sovereignty . . .?The answer is, nothing; not merely nothing in 1908, but nothing for manyyears. . . . So we find, on investigation, that what is described as an assertionof French sovereignty consists of the bare publication of Annex I in 1908,followed by nearly 40 years in which France is not shown to have doneanything to exercise sovereignty at all. (Pleadings, 325)

Thailand did nothing. France did nothing. One or the other has totake the blame for this nothing. The threat of colonial triviality andtrumpery concealed in the photographs has now become a threat togrand images of State conduct. Unless merely publishing the mapswere hailed as sovereign conduct, the embarrassing matter of do-nothing sovereignty would remain at-large. Since sovereignty isemphatically, even obsessively, not nothing, the World Court was, ineffect, asked to guarantee a difference between this nothing andthe sovereignty of States, at least developed States. Therefore thisnothing, this tainted lack of sure control or visible power, must nothide like some legendary bandit in the gaps of a ‘general and invis-ible administrative activity’ that is ‘without relevance in so far asthe frontier areas or the Temple are concerned’ to ambush the pre-tensions of States at inopportune moments (Pleadings, 186; RogerPinto for Cambodia dismissing alleged acts of Thai sovereignty).This threat of doing nothing must be trapped, located, and mappedto a State. Furthermore, in the very act of being mapped down, noth-ing or lack must be displaced from posing a threat to sovereignty,nothing must be seen as recuperable within the State economy.

Soskice put the stakes this high in his closing speech:

After all, the law has to consider and weigh in the balance a formal treatyon the one side, and an unrecorded implied variation on the other. . . .

Mr. Acheson argued that Prince Damrong, when in 1908 he received theAnnex I map, might have written back making it plain that the boundarymarked on this map was not to be taken as binding on Thailand . . . IfPrince Damrong might have written in these terms, why can it not equallybe said that the French authorities when sending the maps should havewritten to Prince Damrong saying: ‘Here are the maps—they involve Thai-land foregoing the Temple and other areas of territory which she wouldhave gotten under the watershed boundary laid down by Article I of the

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1904 Treaty. May we take it that Thailand agrees to forego this territory?’. . . The fact is, neither side wrote in these terms. Both left the matter inobscurity. It is at this period of time, 54 years later. not easy to say whatwas in the mind of either side. Nobody now will ever know. Conceivablyboth sides were a trifle neglectful—neither possibly being particularly onthe alert or mistrustful of the other. But Mr. President, Members of theCourt, solemn treaty rights cannot be abrogated by chance. They cannot bechanged in the comparatively informal way in which some systems ofdomestic law allow purely private commercial bargains to be changed, madebetween private individuals or commercial concerns . . . Boundary linesbetween great countries cannot be drawn by accident. (Pleadings, 646)

Both sides left a matter of sovereignty in obscurity, or what is equallyas threatening, both were in danger of being seen as playing thegame of Statehood with trumpery cards of neglect, accident, andcasual conduct.

The threat of displaying sovereignty in this light runs through theopinions, and in every case the threat has to be displaced. Sir PercySpender wrote:

Although much has been heard in this case about the importance of finaland settled frontiers, apart from the one incident of Prince Damrong’s visitto the Temple, neither state appears to have been aware of what the otherwas doing. It is significant that the Governor of the Cambodian provinceadjacent to the Temple [Suon Bonn, called as a witness for Cambodia] hadnot the slightest idea where the frontier lines were. All he appeared toknow was that the Temple was, so he claimed, within Cambodian territory.(Judgment, 138)

Spender developed at length the argument that although nothing inthe Minutes of the Mixed Commission specifies the decision takenon the borderline in the Dangrek mountains, this nothing really sig-nifies delimitation by simple reference to the 13 February 1904Treaty definition of watershed. Another dissenting judge, MorenoQuintana of Argentina, wrote:

. . . there was performance of concurrent and reciprocally unnoticed admin-istrative activities. Even if known, these activities would have been the sub-ject of objection or different interpretations. All this gives the impressionthat both Cambodia and Thailand lived for more than half a century with-out being particularly certain of their sovereign rights over the temple area.(Judgment, 72)

He noted that Annex I map ‘ bears no date and is not signed by anyauthorized experts, still less by the contracting parties’ which wouldbe ‘the indispensable condition for its validity’ (Judgment, 70). Hecited Article 29 of the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919, that holds

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‘when there is a discrepancy concerning a frontier delimitationbetween the text of a treaty and maps, it is the text and not themaps which is final’ (cited in ibid.). Finally, he appealed to ‘adequateexpert opinion’ (op. cit., 71) to find the watershed. In short, he fixedupon scientific clarity to exclude any ambiguities about sovereignty.

As for the majority opinion, do-nothing sovereignty was domestic-ated as the doing-nothing which constitutes acquiescence. Here ishow Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice, elaborated his agreement with themajority:There can be little doubt that Cambodia’s legal position was weakened bythe fact that . . . it was not until 1949 that any protest on the diplomaticlevel was made about local acts of Thailand in violation, or at any rate inimplied denial, of that sovereignty. But France . . . was entitled to assumefrom the conduct of the central Siamese authorities that the latter acceptedthe frontier as mapped at Preah Vihear. On that basis, but on that basis only,France could safely ignore the activities of local Siamese authorities. . . .Clearly, if Thailand could now be heard to deny this acceptance, the wholelegal foundation on which the relative inactivity of France and Cambodiain this region was fully explicable would be destroyed. (Judgment, 64;emphasis mine)

The Siamese authorities deliberately left the whole thing to the Frenchelements involved, and thus accepted the risk that the maps might proveinaccurate in some respects. Consequently, it was for them to verify theresults, if they wished to do so, in whatever way was most appropriate inthe circumstances, e.g., by consulting neutral experts. . . .

One may sympathize with Siam’s lack of topographical and cartographicalexpertise at this time, but one is dealing with a sovereign independent Stateto whom certain rules of law apply. . . . In short, a principle akin to that ofcaveat emptor is relevant. This is so in all walks of life. A man who consultsa lawyer, doctor, architect, or other expert, is held . . . to accept the possibil-ity that the expert may be mistaken. (Judgment, 58)

Notably absent from Fitzmaurice’s view of maps as merchandise isthe idea that courtesy could remain separate from politics. Rather,a modern state must subordinate all domains to one imperative:coherence, self-sameness, a consistent national will. States need toform contracts and a contract ‘requires . . . a ‘‘sovereign individual’’defined at once by the sovereignty of his will and by an obligationto abjure willfulnes . . . That is to say, what defines the freedom andautonomy of the individual, the principle of identity and self-identity overtime and circumstance that makes promise keeping possible, is theability, or . . . the ‘‘duty, of resembling oneself ’’ ’ (Seltzer, 1992: 73).ICJ Vice-President Ricardo Alfaro of Panama greatly stressed this

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duty’s importance for contractual relations when he sided with themajority.

A State must not be permitted to benefit by its own inconsistency to theprejudice of another State. . . . The party which by its recognition, its repres-entation, its declaration, its conduct or its silence has maintained an atti-tude manifestly contrary to the right it is claiming before an internationaltribunal is precluded from claiming that right. (Judgment, 40)

[The basis of this principle is] the good faith that must prevail in interna-tional relations inasmuch as inconsistency of conduct or opinion on thepart of a State to the prejudice of another is incompatible with good faith.[Secondly,] the necessity for security in contractual relationships.(Judgment, 42)

Such a necessity requires a sovereign state to be on the alert againstthe merest suggestion of a rival claim or risk having its politenessmistaken for its policy. In 1930, Prince Damrong’s polite overlookingof the French Resident’s behavior became in the World Court a polit-ical abandonment of sovereignty because Thailand’s ‘failure to pro-test’ violated Thailand’s duty to resemble itself, to show always andeverywhere the same face of determination to retain Preah Vihear.In 1908, Prince Damrong’s request for more maps that he, in turn,would circulate as gifts was transformed from being a favor of cour-tesy into a ratification of an implied convention, again through afailure to protest. In the post-colonial context, this unfulfilled dutycould be seen as the contemporary version of Oriental lack, anunmanly passivity inconsistent with the evidence for Thai sover-eignty on the ground.

In fact, a typographical error, rather than a cartographical mis-take, spelled out this inconsistency in an uncanny way during theproceedings. Soskice on the afternoon of 13 March 1962 said:

I am indebted to the courtesy of Professor Pinto, who was so good as tobring to my notice that there is a slight error in one of the paragraphs ofthe Rejoinder [of Thailand] . . . Paragraph 67, as it at present reads, beginswith the sentence: ‘There is in fact inconsistency with the exercise of Thaisovereignty.’

Unfortunately the word ‘no’ has been omitted by mistake, and the textshould read: ‘There is in fact no inconsistency with the exercise of Thaisovereignty.’ (Pleadings, 321)

This slip is spooky or uncanny because it is the failure to insert a‘no’ in 1908 that was held to preclude Thailand from claiming the

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map was vitiated by error, and this lack of the sovereign ‘no’ will beseen to be (videtur in the Latin axiom applied) acquiescence.

If this nothing was not laid at Thailand’s feet, then the threatlooming behind the choice between ‘Thailand did nothing’ and‘France did nothing’ may erupt into the disturbing possibility thatsovereignty, if not saying ‘no’, is nothing much, or at least nothingmuch in the evidence. Against this ambiguity and anxiety, the mapwas everything. Commenting on this displacement from sovereignacts to sovereignty by maps, and the consequent rise of caveat emptorto the status of international law, the Thai Ministry of ForeignAffairs on September 5, 1962 observed: ‘A general principle of pri-vate law1 is applied to an international law case . . . in a mannerrepugnant to reasons. It is doubtful whether the rule so freely bor-rowed from the general private law principle has actually receivedrecognition in the Asian region, for none of the cited or known caseson this point concerns this part of the world’ (FAB, 136). Their nextobservation was that ‘In this case, the Court for the first time appliesthe principle of acquiescence to a situation which does not in fact exist.Annex I map never does represent any factual situation, as Francehas not exercised sovereignty over Phra Viharn so as to create afactual situation, in which Thailand can be said to have acquiesced’(FAB, 137; emphasis mine). It is precisely this situation of ghostsovereignty which properly speaking does not quite exist which mustbe deflected by conjuring up the principle of acquiescence.

Thus gifts of maps in 1908, like gifts of photographs in 1930,were used to make absence appear with a determined legal sensein 1962. The displacement was not altogether invisible in 1908; itconsisted in depending on dependency.

Such maps of her own as Siam had in 1908 were uncoordinated. The receiptof these maps drawn by French officers must no doubt have provided anoccasion in its way. They were however French maps expressed in Roman charac-ters. ‘French maps,’ stated Commandant Montguers, the President of theMixed Commission under the Treaty of 1907, in a letter of 17 June 1908to the Governor-General of Indo-China, were ‘of no great use’ to Siam.(Judgment, 127; emphasis mine)

Therefore after the first and second Mixed Delimitation Commis-sions of the Treaties of 1904 and 1907, a Transcription Committee

1 The legal principle of estoppel, preclusion, or acquiescence is translated in Thaias lak kodmai pidpaak, which stands out so strongly from the surrounding legal verbi-age that it may be glossed as ‘the shut-your-mouth principle.’

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had to be assembled to create a system to translate place namesfrom Roman characters to Thai, and to decide how to refer to placescarrying both Khmer and Thai names. According to a letter writtenin March 1909 from the French Minister in Siam to the FrenchForeign Minister about work of Transcription Committee, theFrench had ‘an ultimate aim . . . entertained from the outset.’ Theywished, he saidto persuade the Siamese to embark on a course that is likely to lead themto the goal we have in view, that is to say, to cause them, at a later stage,to appeal invariably for our help for the purpose of drawing up a generalmap of Siam . . . (cited in Judgment, 145; emphasis by Spender)

Depending on Siamese dependency became, at the World Court in1962, depending on Siamese acceptance, the legal grounds preclud-ing or estopping Siam from claiming consent was vitiated by theerrors of Annex I. The advocates for France and Cambodia seemedto have a gift for making something of nothing. One in particularseemed to derive great pleasure from handling maps, and communic-ated the pleasures of map-reading competence to the Court. It mayor may not come as a surprise that his name was Dean Acheson, orthat one of his approaches to a topographical map involved ghostwitnesses.

Stealing Surprise

June 21, 1962, was the Centenary of Prince Damrong and duly cel-ebrated in Thailand to honor the ‘Father of Thai History.’ On thesame day, the Bangkok Post reported resentment of what it hadearlier dubbed Dean Acheson’s ‘brilliant services’ to Cambodia inthe Temple case (Bangkok Post, 18 June, 1962). Thailand had chosenits own American lawyer all too well, for he was made a judge ofthe World Court and had to withdraw from the case. As the BangkokPost explained:It is regarded here as strange that while America on the one hand madesuch a demonstration of solidarity with Thailand as the stationing of troopshere to bolster this country’s defenses against possible Communist aggres-sion, on the other hand it allowed the use of a presidential adviser by anadversary of Thailand in a vital case involving strategic land along theborder, sources said.

There has been a feeling in top official circles of doubt concerning Americanmotives and designs in Southeast Asia as a result of American involvement

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in the dispute, the sources added. Officials wondered why, when Thailandengaged the services of Mr. Philip Jessup, eminent American who is not atall an official, for the case, he was nominated to the World Court. After hiselection, Mr. Jessup had to withdraw from giving an opinion for the judg-ment because he had once been working on the Thai case. (19 June, 1962)

Public resentment of Acheson’s ‘brilliant services’ caused an Amer-ican to write in complaint, and the Foreign Affairs Bulletin (FAB) ofThailand answered the letter saying, ‘To put it more simply, howwould you or the American people feel if someone of similar positionhere in Thailand were to act for Mr. Fidel Castro in an internationalbody and especially a judicial body?’ (FAB Aug.–Sep., 2(1): 57). Itmay be said that Acheson’s accomplishment was precisely to makeit impossible for anyone in Thailand to attain a ‘similar position,’ atleast in the eyes of the World Court. For the genius of Acheson’sstrategy was to service the judges brilliantly with various pleasures:surprise, superiority, and the thrill of hearing ghost witnesses.

Seni Pramoj struck the note of surprise in reaction to theAcheson’s arguments about Thai inconsistency. When opening theThai case on 7 March, he said:

[It was] somewhat of a surprise to see that during the course of thesepleadings, the Government of Cambodia has repeatedly attempted to usurpThailand’s position as defending State. Cambodia has tried to evade theburden of the claimant, by doing so has distorted the relative burdens ofthe parties and given a somewhat lopsided view of the case as a whole.(Pleadings, 213)

He pointed to Cambodia’s confusion about exactly when the Thaiencroached on the Temple. Did they cross the line in 1940, whenSiamese guards were posted? Was it 1949, when French authoritiesfirst noticed the guards there? Was it 1954 when Cambodianattempt to station troops there was forestalled by despatching Thaiborder police? While they naturally agree on the Treaty of 1904,Cambodia insists this includes Annex I map, although it is only thesource for a sketch attached to a Protocol of 1907. It is Cambodiathat must prove its validity. ‘But it has been contended that Cam-bodia has discharged this onus of proof by presenting circumstancesgiving prima facie evidence reversing the onus of proof. I submit thatCambodia has done nothing of the kind,’ he declared (Pleadings,213). On 12 March, Soskice also presented the burden of the claim-ant in terms of the nature of the terrain. ‘Here nature has erecteda ready made boundary, and it must require a perverse ingenuity torepudiate nature’s own handiwork in this particular area . . . To cut

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Phra Viharn off from Thailand is almost like cutting a nose off aface’ (Pleadings, 289).

Speaking on 21 March, Acheson thus had to overcome theoutlandish nature of Cambodia’s claim, and he did it by turningincredulity against Thailand. ‘The most used word in our oppon-ent’s vocabulary is ‘‘surprised’’ and in another form ‘‘surprising.’’They are constantly surprised’ (Pleadings, 446). Acheson under-mined Counsel for Thailand’s ‘doctrine of incredulity’ (seePleadings, 607 and 453) by arguing that ‘Expressions of surprise,alarm, or indignation are the artifices of advocacy’ (Pleadings,447). Thailand’s surprise is a pose and pretension, according toAcheson, who reserved the only genuinely proper surprise in thiscase for the absurdity called Thai conduct.

Acheson’s foremost example concerns the Royal Thai SurveyDepartment. First, Acheson picks up Soskice’s idea that ‘Thailand isnot a corporate entity’ (Judgment, 318). Soskice had applied thisconcept to explain how ordinary lay citizens could be unaware of theexact border while the local officials would be knowledgeable. Afterall, said Soskice,

No governments at all can function except through their officials. The actsof its local officials are as much the acts of government as are acts of thehead of a department. In any event, Thailand’s evidence to which I havemade reference [since page 301] shows that both local and highly placedofficials were involved in the exercise of authority over Phra Viharn.(Pleadings, 306)

Next, Acheson tries to blur the distinction between local people andlocal officials by arguing that Thai Survey Department workers wereas unconcerned with the border as local people. Every time theyneeded a map of the scale used by the Annex map, they reprintedit, undeterred by its geographical inaccuracy and wrong border place-ment. ‘Sovereignty over Preah Vihear, if the Court please, was tothe Survey Department of the Royal Thai Government a matter ofscale’ (Pleadings, 447). Buoyed upon this play on words, Achesonmanages to turn Soskice’s rhetoric against itself, saying of Thailandwhile quoting his opponent, ‘I am respectfully submitting that thismust be the most extraordinary country in the world’ (ibid.). Byreason of the Thai Survey Department’s improper behavior, Achesonturns against Thailand the very words Soskice had used against Cam-bodia, and converts Thailand’s feigned surprise into an occasion for‘genuine’ surprise.

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But what had initially caused Soskice to characterize Cambodiaas ‘the most extraordinary country in the world’? The context of thecomment was Soskice’s cross-examination of the Governor of theCambodian province adjoining the Temple and hence the provinceCambodia alleged was invaded and occupied by Thai troops stationedat the Temple. Yet ex-Governor Suon Bonn seemed to know littleabout international incidents on a site supposedly under his jurisdic-tion. Hence it was ‘extraordinary’ thatthe provincial Governor is kept in ignorance of a foreign invasion by outsideguards on territory which is immediately under his administrative jurisdic-tion; is kept in ignorance, in other words, of what is described by the Frenchas ‘un empietement’—trespass, as I understand that word—on to his own prov-ince. (Pleadings, 342)

Acheson was therefore substituting for the Cambodian ex-Governor’s extraordinary unawareness of military invasion, one thatcontrasted with the much more impressive Thai evidence docu-menting sovereign control, the Thai Survey Department’s extraord-inary unawareness of its own impropriety, one that consisted in theuse by official government mappers of an inaccurate map with awrong borderline.

But what an extraordinary substitution Acheson is propounding!If the provincial Governor was ill-informed about Thai troops cross-ing his border, perhaps it was because in practice the border left thetemple in Thailand, a possibility Soskice designed his questioning todraw out and thus augment page after page of documents showingThailand’s de facto control of the area. But if functionaries of theThai Survey Department are less than exemplary, reprinting on oneoccasion, and marking it ‘For a Temporary Purpose,’ an erroneousmap (see Pleadings, 607 and 319, and Rejoinder of Thailand, para.61), Acheson contends that this frivolous indifference to maps istantamount to misplacing the border itself, an impropriety so out-rageous he can proceed to equate it with a governor’s indifferenceto foreign invasion. Substituting for Soskice’s use of ‘extraordinary’another sense, one based on an implicit standard that official mapdepartments must never be so outrageously careless about theirnational boundary lines, even temporarily, Acheson appropriates hisopponent’s incredulity. In so doing, he makes the difference betweengenuine and feigned surprise follow the divisions between a Westernmodel and an Oriental mime, between a map and its territory, andbetween central officials and local authorities. Because the central

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Survey Department’s mimicry of Western models failed when theyrelied on a bad map, a fortiori the local authorities, like the localpeople whose ignorance the Thai map officials seemed to imitate,must have failed to secure the territory.

Paradoxically, this merits ‘genuine’ surprise because it is not, tocertain minds, surprising at all. What strains credulity is that Thai-land could dare to feign surprise at the bareness of the evidence forFrench sovereignty. For if ‘her’ central officials cannot treat a mapproperly, how could ‘her’ local authorities rule the land? Seniexplained the Thai view, saying maps

have played a very slight part in the political life of Thailand . . . Owing tothe Treaty of 1904 we had lost territories in the lowlands south of theDangrek. The territories lost were named in the proclamation of 9December 1904 . . . This proclamation was sufficient to mark for inhabit-ants and local authorities of the district concerned where the frontier lay.No map was needed to find where the frontier was on Mount Phra Viharn.In fact, if a map had been shown to them, I doubt very much whether theinhabitants would have been able to read it or whether it would have shownthe frontier to them with any greater clarity. Therefore I can say, withouthesitation and without danger of exaggeration, that the significance givento maps in the present proceeding is not in proportion with the part theyplayed in the political life of Thailand either fifty years ago or even today.. . . The Thai administrative authorities considered the watershed of theDangrek as the frontier between Thailand and Cambodia, and that frontierwas never a subject of administrative headaches. There was no situation torequire that the Royal Survey Department checked the results of its surveywith any previous map. (Pleadings, 215)

But then how different these Siamese must be from Colonel Bernard,President of the French Commission of Delimitation in 1904, ofwhom Acheson says, he was ‘much too French and precise for suchsloppiness in expression’ (452, arguing for exactitude of titles onCommission documents). And what a dangerous attitude this wouldbe for the region in 1962, pointed out Acheson early on March 1:

It will not have escaped the notice of this Court that the position now takenby the Government of Thailand would, if sanctioned by the Court, throwthis entire frontier into uncertainty and chaos. If the maps published in1908 under the authority of the Franco-Siamese Commission of Delimita-tion are ‘apocryphal’ as regards Preah Vihear, then they are equally apoc-ryphal as regards the entire frontier between Cambodia and Laos, as delim-ited under the Treaty of 1904, extending for many hundreds of miles. Nolonger will there be in that area a fixed and certain frontier . . . instead . . .the frontier will consist merely of such topographical features as watershedsand crests of mountains, with each of the three interested States free to

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interpret the precise meaning of those generalities as it wills . . . (Pleadings,148)

Thus on Thailand’s theory no part of the frontier as delimited is safe orcertain. [But] how very important it is that the frontier in this part of theworld—in this particular part of the world—should be clearly delimited atthis time. This is a time when that frontier is being, and may in the futurecontinued to be, crossed by people engaged in hostile operations, and it iscertainly of the greatest possible importance that there be a delimitation;not merely general principles, but a delimitation by an actual line so thatone may know, when incidents occur, in what country they have occurred.(Pleadings, 149; emphasis in original)

Acheson’s view of the extraordinary carelessness of the Thai mapofficials thus relies on a somewhat magical belief that a line well-drawn, like a map well-tended, has the power to conjure up peaceon the ground from map-given peace of mind, at least those mindsas surprisingly well-ordered as his own.2

If it Pleasure the Court

If there is an erotics of the map, connected with pleasurable feelingsof almost divine mastery that arise in a fantasy of exact visualization,from an eye-in-the-sky origin, of naked and submissive space yieldingits secrets to the connoisseur, then the services of Dean Acheson mayrelate to bodily senses as much as cerebral conceits. For Achesonrepeatedly involves the judges in handling, manipulating, and oglingthe sleek lines and contours of maps. He multiplies and disseminatesmaps, makes transparent overlays (ghost maps?) and urges judges toapply them. He instructs expert witnesses to look for moist streamsin magnifying glasses and encourages judge-voyeurs (see Pleadings,467–477). He attempts to force the watershed into contorted posi-tions while seeking out dam slopes, mounds, and the drainage ‘southand southwest of point F’ (see Pleadings, 431, 466, 471). Intriguedby such polymorphous services, even Wellington Koo was not abso-lutely sure where the watershed was, despite hearing extensivelyfrom two sets of experts, including a Thai witness who surveyed the

2 Annex I map seems to have required action for the first time in 1939, whenLuang Wijit Wathakan of the Fine Arts Department examined the map, noticedthe error, and notified the Phibul government to take it up with the French. SeeSuriyawut, 1993: 683. This article also reproduces the photograph of Prince Dam-rong at Phra Viharn on page 680.

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area on the ground and looked under the trees during the rainyseason to see which way streams in fact ran. Here is only oneexample, notable for combining appropriation of the opponents’ dra-matic gesture, use of an overlay, and the forgetting, at the climacticmoment, of a telegraph wire.

It is March 22, and Acheson has just used overlays to prove Thai-land, in attempting to demonstrate the untenable effects of followingthe Annex I frontier line, had merely superimposed the frontier lineon the modern map without any appropriate adjustment. Now hequotes extensively from a speech by Henri Rolin, an attorney forThailand who had claimed two villages mapped onto the Cambodianside are actually on the Thai side.

[Rolin’s words quoted back by Acheson:] It is true that according toMap No. 5 (Second Commission) these two villages which are locatedon the plateau are placed inside the Cambodian border, actually rightclose up against the Cambodian border. [Now from here on I submitthat M. Rolin steps from his role as advocate into the role of witness.He continues:] However, we have to conclude that this solution whichhas been advocated by the Second Commission and by Lieutenant Malan-dain had, in the light of experience, we suppose, proven to be practicallyundefendable because facts, Members of the Court, are stronger than a map.[And he went on:] It has been impossible, it has been impossible [he says]for the Army of Cambodia to maintain its sovereignty over this pied aterre which scrupulously has been reserved for it some tens of metres ormaybe a few kilometres from the watershed. It was considered in practice[he says] it was considered in practice that it was obviously necessary topermit Thailand to remain in possession of these villages up to the edgeof the cliff unless insurmountable difficulties were to be encountered.[And then came the dramatic gesture of M. Rolin, He picked up a map,this map, and he said:] Here is proof of the statement: a map, Membersof the Court, a Cambodian map. This is a map which shows the districtof Siem Reap (Annex 81a). It is on a scale of 1:200,000 and is datedJuly 1939, tempore non suspecto. And here I find a frontier [he continues]which substantially reverts to that of Sector 5 with this difference . . .:that Dak Ream and Kouan are both located north of the border with apath coming from the south crossing the border to lead to Dak Reamin Thai territory. [And then this bit of evidence:] We have checked thisby telegraph following the discovery of the fact and have found thatthe village of Khoun is a village still inhabited and effectively underThai administration. (Pleadings, 459; French original 255; Acheson’semphasis)

Acheson’s refutation involves the judges in rubbing maps together:

We have prepared and distributed to the Members of the Court copiesof M. Rolin’s apocryphal map—said by him to be Cambodian, but wholly

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unidentified, and unidentifiable, from anything on it as such. We have alsoprepared, and similarly distributed, an overlay map of Sector 5 as delimitedby the Second Commission (Annex LXXX). If the overlay is placed on M.Rolin’s map, it will be seen at a glance that the frontier of the two maps isidentical. The frontier has not been changed . . . So the map proves exactlynothing. Why the names of the towns are written, on M. Rolin’s map, abovethe frontier instead of through it, as in the Sector 5 map, I do not knowand shall not speculate, although I could. And, on Mr. Rolin’s map, thelocations of the villages, apart from where their names are written, are notshown by the usual small black dot or circle.

One statement, however, can be made without contradiction: it is not, I amsure, because the villages have mounted a magic carpet and moved north-ward across the unchanged frontier. (Pleadings, 460)

Acheson then (with a dramatic gesture?) produced CambodianAnnex LXXXIII, a map dated 1953, with both villages south of theborder, in Cambodia, but on top of the cliff. By now it seems every-one has been so driven to distraction that the telegraph confirmingKhoun under Thai administration was abandoned. The pleasure ofthe Court Members sliding the borderlines together, handling theinstruments of map-hood during a momentary release from the leg-alistic drone, and thus coupling with physical superimposition a sen-sation of the psychological superiority deriving from one’s map-reading competence, seems to have affected most of the chamber.Once it got overlaid on the map’s magic carpet, the line on papereffaced memory of the telegraph line.

Ghost Witnesses

I gather that Mr. Acheson is pained if opposing Counsel says they are sur-prised at statements that he makes. In order to spare him anguish, I willtherefore not say that I am surprised at these statements of his; althoughpoliteness certainly requires that I equally should not be understood to saythat I am not surprised. (Pleadings, 620)

With prim English ‘politeness,’ Sir Frank Soskice set out to list thelengths to which Acheson had gone to undermine Thailand’s expertwitnesses from the International Training Center at Delft, Dr Ver-stappen, who directed the project and checked the aerial photogeo-logy work, and Mr Ackermann, who conducted a topographicalinvestigation on the ground at Khao Phra Viharn. Here are some ofAcheson’s barbs:

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‘Witnesses have now blandly conceded glaring and material errors . . .’‘Mr. Ackermann went to Preah Vihear and there discovered the invisiblemound . . .’‘Mr. Ackermann’s revolutionary discoveries’‘Rather conveniently we are told both the alternative watersheds left theTemple itself in Thailand’‘Mr. Ackermann admitted . . . there was a third possible alternative water-shed . . . never mentioned until I asked Mr. Ackermann about it.’‘I confess I find it harder and harder to understand how the ITC school atDelft operates.’‘Dr. Verstappen, . . . like Lord Nelson, put his blind eye to the magnifyingglass . . .’‘[I have] a sense of frustration in part derived from the fact that, whateverI can do to make a new analysis can always be countered by drawing onmaterial from the inexhaustible secret portfolio . . .’‘Thailand’s witnesses have reversed the slope of this valley. They haveachieved this miracle although now they testify that neither God nor hisinstrument geology could have done it in over 1000 years.’(see Pleadings, 610–611)

All these expressions, Soskice declared, ‘are very cordially resentedon this side of the Bar’ (Pleadings, 611). But perhaps Acheson’sstrangest maneuver, foreshadowed by the last statement above, wasto call ghost witnesses.

Acheson tried to make a case for a stream, visible on Annex Ionly, so he claimed, through a magnifying glass, which flowed intoCambodia in 1907. He said, ‘There is considerable eye-witness evid-ence, in addition to Annex I, for the existence of a stream collectingwater from the Temple area and flowing through or over the cliffnear point F, and continuing down the steep slope into the Cambod-ian plain’ (Pleadings, 467). Who is Acheson’s witness? None otherthan our old friend, Henri Parmentier, the French archaeologist whomet Prince Damrong at the Temple in 1930. Parmentier, Achesonargues, described ‘this’ stream as ‘a rocky ravine, the water fromwhich flows toward Cambodia, forming a fairly considerable stream,the O Kbal Pos Nakrac’ (Pleadings, 429 [original 271]; note thatno direction is given). Acheson adds that ‘Evidence exists also thatwater from the top of the plateau flowed down the so-called ‘‘brokenstaircase’’ onto the Cambodian plain,’ and asserts ‘Parmentier sayson page 310 of his work . . . that he observed a considerable amountof water flowing down this staircase’ (Pleadings, 468; note that thekey words ‘onto the Cambodian plain’ are not attributed toParmentier). For good measure, Acheson throws in another Frencharchaeologist, Georges Groslier, who says something to the same

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effect (ibid.). Finally, Acheson draws into the fold a British archaeolo-gist, John Black, who says:

‘Local legend has it that this stream [north of the ‘‘broken staircase’’ whichruns east–west] was a former reservoir. Making use of the natural depres-sion, the builders are said to have converted it into a dam, by controllingthe east outflow, to provide the large water supply needed by thousands ofworkmen who must have been engaged on the task of the magnitude ofPhra Vihar. There was, however, no evidence that this natural depressionhad been used as such, though the job of creating a reservoir would havepresented no difficulty to the Khmer who were unsurpassed in the art ofwater conservancy.’ (quoted in Pleadings, 468)

Now comes Acheson to interpret Black’s statement and concludefor a stream flowing east into Cambodia:

Following elephant tracks through the thick vegetation in this valley, he[Black] found a stream which coursed through the valley. Both Parties areagreed on the existence of such a stream. Indeed, Mr. Ackermann went allthe way to Preah Vihear to find the direction of its flow.

Now comes a most important statement from Mr. Black. The east outflow ofthis stream (the east outflow; that is, the outflow into Cambodia) was, hesays, once stopped up, so local legend had it . . . Mr. Black himself saw noevidence that the valley had been used as a reservoir, but he said that thejob of turning it into one would have presented no difficulty.

In 1955, then, the east outflow of this stream was unblocked. Can one doubtthat it would have presented even less difficulty thereafter than in the yearA.D. 900 to block it, had it been desired to do so? . . .

Between them, these two witnesses account for the presence of such astream in 1924 (Parmentier’s first visit), 1929 and 1930 (Parmentier’ssecond and third visits) and 1955 (Black’s visit). The same stream is evenshown on one of the many versions of the physical features produced byThailand’s experts—their map 75c. (Pleadings, 468; emphasis by Acheson)

Indeed, continues Acheson in the afternoon of 22 March,

To walk along a stream, to observe its course and then report what one hasseen, does not require any expert knowledge at all. Anyone can do this. Inparticular, Messrs. Parmentier and Black did do it. So, when Parmentierand Black say they saw a different and inconsistent stream [from the oneobserved by Ackermann], the three of them are speaking on the same level:that is, they are all three speaking as witnesses. Intrinsically . . . none ofthem is entitled to any greater weight than any of the others.

Now we do not assert that Mr. Ackermann did not see what he says he saw.We hope and believe that the Court will be impatient with assertions, if

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they are made, that Messrs. Parmentier and Black did not see what theysay they saw. (Pleadings, 470)

It may be pointed out that while Ackermann, the expert witnesscalled by Thailand to testify about his 11-day ground survey on thesite, did walk along the streams in the vicinity, it cannot be assumedthat archaeologists Parmentier, Black, or, for that mater, Groslier,the ‘witnesses’ called by Cambodia, specifically paid attention tostream channel flows. Nor should it escape attention that Parmentiernever says the stream flows eastward, and Black only attests that alocal legend speaks of a dam. It is far from clear that the quotescan be sutured together to conclude, as Acheson does, that the ‘eastoutflow’ necessarily runs ‘onto the Cambodian Plain.’ It cannot beshown that the word ‘east’ was used because Black actually notedthe stream flowed east, or because it was the wording used by hisinformants in relating a legend which, for all anyone knows, mayrefer to another stream or dam, or might mix up east and west, orpossibly was mis-heard by Black, who then mixed up the Thai wordstawan auk [east] and tawan tauk [west]. It should be noted, too, thatHenri Parmentier visited the Temple in May and June of 1924,March 1929, and January and February 1930, while John Black wasthere in late spring and in November 1955 (see Pleadings, 617). Inthese dry periods of the year, none of these ghost witnesses couldreadily have checked the direction of streams that flow in the rainyseason, even if they had set out to do that.

Furthermore, it cannot be proven that map 75c represents bothParmentier’s considerable ‘O Kbal Pos Nakrac’ and Black’s streamas flowing into Cambodia, especially when it is recalled that Achesonhimself complained against map 75c as one of those maps drawn upbefore Ackermann’s ground survey which Thailand nonetheless filedwithout first updating.

What puzzles me [Acheson] most is the mental process which would permitthe filing with this Court of Map Sheet 2 of Annex 49 . . . [because] Appar-ently Mr. Ackermann’s revolutionary discoveries had created quite a sensa-tion in the International Training Center of Delft. Apparently the ThaiGovernment knew that the April map had been thought insufficient todetermine the watershed, and they had approved Mr. Ackermann’s visit toPreah Vihear. But either Mr. Ackermann’s revolutionary discoveries werenot reported to the Thai authorities, or they, too, saw no reason for cor-recting the glaring errors on Map Sheet 2 and joined in filing it with thisCourt. Even the photogeological sketch made in April—Thai Annex 75c—was shown to be in error by Mr. Ackermann’s trip, so it is said. Nevertheless,it was filed with the Court without any explanation. . . .

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When I called Dr. Verstappen’s attention to this stream shown by his ownDepartment of the I.T.C., he, like Lord Nelson, put his blind eye to themagnifying glass and declared that he could not see the stream at all, butsaw two quite different streams. I submit that any Member of the Courtwho wishes to look at this spot through a magnifying glass—as one Memberhas already done—will see this stream drawn right through the allegedwatershed and flowing into Cambodia. (Pleadings, 466)

One may detect in Acheson’s puzzlement the same impatience earl-ier shown for the alleged inconsistency and negligence of the ThaiSurvey Department when they used maps that contained borderlineerrors. One may also wonder what mental process would permitAcheson to complain about map 75c, consult it with a magnifyingglass, and then use it to corroborate the stories of ghosts whose ‘eye-witness evidence’ he never brought up with Ackermann when he hadthe chance to cross-examine the witness.

The answer lies south and southwest of point F:

I urge that the Members of the Court study very closely the area to thesouth and southwest of point F. When Mr. Ackermann’s stream is trans-posed from Thai Annex 75b on to [abovementioned] Map Sheet 2, Annex49, it will be seen that this stream crosses first the 550 metre and then the540 metre contour lines a very short distance west of the cliff edge, just atthe point where the cliff edge is dissolving into a more gentle slope. . . . Ithink it will be apparent to the Members of the Court that in this area itis a question, even today, not of metres, but of centimetres, whether thatstream will veer off to the east and thence into Cambodia, or whether itwill turn to the northwest as Mr. Ackermann says it does . . .

Let me repeat for the sake of clarity that I am not challenging Mr. Acker-mann’s statement that the stream, in fact, does not now do this. (Pleadings,471)

The Members of the Court neither sent independent experts to theTemple, nor needed to, since their decision rendered the actualwatershed moot. Few expressed an opinion: Fitzmaurice thought thewatershed ran as contended by Thailand, but voted with the major-ity; Koo though the Court should have sent experts. Somehow theincontrovertible nature of the terrain, which Soskice thought only a‘perverse ingenuity’ could repudiate, seems to have vanished into aquibble over ‘centimetres’ of ‘gentle slope,’ as if the cliff face itselfhad become as insubstantial as the ghosts conjured to reverse thewater flow upon it. Somehow Colonel Bernard’s desire for a naturaland visible frontier line, like a watershed borne by a cliff, had cometo appear naive and difficult, as if invisible witnesses could transposein the span of decades what Acheson could transpose by the magical

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rubbing of maps. Helped by Acheson’s brilliant services, the Templewas transposed.

The truth is that something is happening here of which we have heardbefore. The slope of the valley is being reversed; but it is not our witnesseswho are doing it, it is Mr. Acheson. When he suggests to the Court that M.Parmentier and Mr. Black saw a stream flowing eastward through thisvalley, he is solemnly suggesting that the whole inclination of the valley wasexactly reversed between 1955 and 1961 when—and Mr. Acheson does notchallenge this—Mr. Ackermann saw the stream flowing from east to west.I do not think I go too far in submitting that this suggestion can only bedescribed as one which borders on the fantastic. (Sir Frank Soskice inPleadings, 621)

Anticipatory Violence

What has been said thus far may be easily summarized: mimesis isthe threat in the gift. When Prince Damrong gave a gift of souvenirphotographs, they threatened to represent the trumpery of colonial-ism, and the gift had to be misrecognized as a counter-presentationacquiescing to, or failing to protest, French sovereignty. When bothParties represented themselves as sovereign States, the evidencethreatened to reduce that sovereignty to a matter of Minutes, visits,and mostly doing nothing, whereupon the gift of Colonel Bernard’sgeneral map series of frontier areas was misrecognized as solemnacceptance of an implied agreement, established, so the World Courtjudged, by Thailand doing nothing. And when Dean Acheson servicedthe judges with the gifts of surprise, superiority, and thrilling ghostwitnesses, he showed how pleasurable to its masters and howthreatening for its adversaries the technology of mimesis, consistingin this case of maps, could be. The question now becomes, Whatmakes mimesis threatening? It seems widely assumed that a repres-entation may be more or less fitting for a particular reality, andthat when mimesis is behaving properly the fit is good but when therepresentation errs it does violence to the reality. I suggest that wereject this false choice between bad, threatening mimesis and good,proper mimesis, as also we should reject a false choice between Thai-land or Cambodia. This sovereign pretense of having a choice, thispresumption that to apply judgment is to end violence, is a profounddisavowal of the historic process by which differences are constructedso as to be apparent, acceptable, relevant, or estimable. To sacrifice

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that past may be the very action that destines mimesis for violence.For the rest of our journey, then, I want to explore the absenceopened up by the World Court’s disavowal of its violent pedigree,the founding violence of modern nation-states. Shut out and denied,this violence fled in two directions: into the future, and into thelandscape.

In its Preah Vihear decision, ICJ upheld the stability of contracts,the finality of frontiers, the propriety of judicial settlement, all in thename of promoting peace and ending the violence of internationalaltercations. On March 27, 1962, Seni Pramoj questioned whetherthis violence was not merely an effect of Cambodian representations.

Mr. President, Members of the Court, during the course of this case, Cam-bodia has more than once charged Thailand with having committed acts ofviolence against Cambodia. Much emphasis has been placed in the Cam-bodian pleadings on such words as ‘violence’, ‘armed violence’ and ‘force’.It has been Cambodia’s intention to make Thailand appear in the eyes ofthis Court and hence in the eyes of the whole world, as an aggressive bully,a cruel and destructive menace to the peace and security of small, distressedCambodia. It has been Cambodia’s intention to sway this Court with sym-pathy for its cause, the cause of the helpless against the powerful. Cam-bodia has come before this Court wearing a mantle of injured innocence, asmall boy seeking the warm protection of the society of nations. Mr. TruongCang has told the Court of Cambodia being opposed from the outset byviolence, armed violence. He hoped that the court would settle an unhappyfrontier incident, that there would not be created other incidents thatmight be more distressing and doubtless ‘more destructive’ for that little coun-try, Cambodia.

I ask the Court to pause a moment and consider: When did all this violenceoccur? How many gallons of blood have been spilt over Phra Viharn? Whenwere Cambodian guards forcefully pushed over the precipice by a Thaihand? Does there appear in any of the documents submitted by either partyevidence that a Thai even shook a wrathful fist at a Cambodian?

I ask the Court to consider facts, not the blown-up oratory of Cambodia.What are these facts? [He reviewed the events leading up to the proceed-ings and concluded:] All this was done without a shot being fired. Whatthen is the violence alleged by Cambodia? (Pleadings, 563–564)

As Seni’s description alleging Cambodian guile implies, it was almostentirely a violence within representation, formed in the press andradio of both nations. This war of words can be followed, blow for blow,in publications of that era, and a perverse dynamic emerges from the

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exchange.3 The two countries, ally and neutral, appear locked in avicious circle of mimetic desire (see Girard, 1977) for a negative differ-ence. In the bipolar climate, both claimed a non-aggressive posturewhile aggressively pursuing modern national identity.

McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser to US President Ken-nedy, formulated the basis for this perverse dynamic between allyand neutral in 1962.

In one way or another all of our military alliances take their present mean-ing mainly from the threat of Communist expansionism . . . Yet because weare numerous and varied, and because we live at different distances fromthe various centers of Communist aggressive initiative, we do not all see theCommunist threat alike . . . It is therefore fortunate that among the US alliedopinions, ours is near the center. (Bundy, 1962: 19; emphasis mine)

An ally like the front-line state of Thailand thus had to worrywhether the friendship of America was genuine, or merely a facadefor cold calculations of security. Acheson’s services for Cambodia, aswe have seen, was hardly reassuring. In contrast, Bundy seemed tofind befriending the neutral easier.

Fortunately, most of our neutral friends are friends indeed. We will continueour respect for their neutrality, in our concern for their development, inour belief that their independent progress is deeply in the common interestof humanity. Because we ourselves are a new people, a recent historicaladdition to the written record of mankind, we can and do feel with a shockof recognition the pride and purpose of the new countries. (Bundy, 1962: 18;my emphasis)

Now Prince Sihanouk’s type of neutrality was certainly shocking toThailand. On June 9, 1962, near the eve of the World Court’sdecision, Prince Sihanouk, speaking in response to newspapermen,six times ‘launched into false and frenzied attacks against Thailand.He also referred to the Prime Minister of Thailand in terms whichare not usual among civilized people. Such vile attacks and allega-tions denote such vulgarity and incoherence, they sound more likeutterances coming from an inmate of a psychopathic ward.’ (FABAug.–Sep., 2(1): 31, 1962). What did America do? It delivered 12

3 For Cambodian views see Petite anthologie de la presse thaie, 1960; Livre blanc sur larupture des relations diplomatiques entre le Cambodge et la Thailande, le 23 octobre 1961, n.d.(1962?). For Thai views see Facts about the Relations between Thailand and Cambodia,1961; Foreign Affairs Bulletin (FAB), 1961ff. A contemporary overview is found inFar Eastern Economic Review of 23 Nov., 1961 as well as Singh, 1962. Useful secondaryliterature of the period includes Leifer, 1963; Nuechterlein, 1965; Smith, 1965;Wilson, 1963.

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T-28 aircraft to the Cambodian Air Force in addition to previouslygiven H-19 helicopters and anti-aircraft guns, and was consideringdonating additional H-34 troop-carrying helicopters and M-113amphibious armoured personnel carriers (FAB Aug.–Sep., 2(1): 37,1962; Nuechterlein, 1965: 254). And Sihanouk’s response? Said theChairman of the Cambodian delegation to the United Nations 17thGeneral Assembly: ‘The Prince did not fail to give notice, withoutany possible ambiguity, to the Western Powers that he would nothesitate, if he did not obtain satisfaction as to substance, to ensurethe security of Cambodia by appealing to the Chinese People’sRepublic and the Soviet Union for troops to protect that security’(quoted in FAB Oct.–Nov., 2(2): 176, 1962). Such paradoxes‘seemed to prove that Cambodia could get aid from all sides in theCold War without having to make the adjustments that committednations such as Thailand had to make in terms of less flexibility inforeign policy’ (Nuechterlein, 1965: 251).

To speak schematically, Cambodian independence and neutralitywas based on a strategy of playing the superpowers off against oneanother. The most convenient way to lash out at the United Stateswas to bait its ally, Thailand, by edging closer to the Communistbloc. To keep Cambodia as far from Communism as possible, Amer-ica would overlook Thailand’s distress and engage in friendly persua-sions that Thailand undoubtedly noted, ‘with a shock of recognition,’as disturbingly similar to gifts received as an ally. Thailand, out ofa logic alloyed with envy, would thus attempt to increase its ownindependence in foreign policy and ‘began to consider a shift to aneutral policy and rapprochement with the Communist bloc’ (Smith,1965: 186). Or more exactly, a policy ‘not-pro-West . . . not pro-Communist . . . also not-neutralist,’ and hence quintessentially ‘Thai-ist’ or ‘based on Thai history, Thai culture, Thai interests’ (quoted inWilson, 1963: 87). However, this need to be Thai through negativedifference would, at the very least, confuse and collapse the differ-ence, so assiduously cultivated by Prince Sihanouk, between valiantCambodian neutrality and Thailand’s (materially enviable) slaveryto her American master.

Prince Sihanouk, poisonous invective aside, was quite lucid aboutthe need to prevent Thai neutrality:

On the one hand [America] furnishes our adversaries with all the meansnecessary to menace our existence, while on the other hand it constitutes,voluntarily or not, by its presence within the borders of our adversaries, asufficient guarantee for our survival.

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When Thailand becomes neutral, we will no longer be able to count oncommunist assistance. . . . When one must choose between neutrals, onechooses the most important and the most ‘compliant.’ When that daycomes, it will no longer be possible for us to call on the west for aid, for thevoluntary disengagement of Thailand will mean that the Free World nolonger weighs heavily in the balance of Southeast Asia’s destiny. (Quotedin Smith, 1965: 187–8)

And so to keep a strongly aligned Thailand in the game, Sihanoukwould return repeatedly to the attack, and make comments such as‘The Thais, or our elder brothers who at one time used to be ouryounger brothers . . . can change their skin. They have a variety ofmasks. They can put on a monkey mask or a demon mask or any-thing. They may survive’ (quoted in FAB 1(2): 37, 1961). Such wasthe symmetry of the situation, however, that the charge could be,and was, levelled by Thai radio and press at Prince Sihanouk himself.Widespread was a riddle based on a pun. Q: ‘Thai people do not likewhat color [si arai]?’ A: ‘They do not like Sihanouk’ (Charles Keys,personal communication).

In what must have seemed like supercilious dismissal that onlyrankled more, Thailand, at least officially, was restrained. The Minis-try of Foreign Affairs complained uncannily of the disadvantage ofsilence, saying that ‘In spite of the fact that the Thai Governmenthad not seen fit to reply in kind to the Cambodian campaign ofvilification and preferred to observe the greatest restraint, Cambod-ian leaders mistook the silence on the Thai side as a sign of weaknessand even as an acknowledgement of all the falsehoods propagatedby Cambodia’ (FAB Oct.–Nov., 1(2): 63, 1961). But on October 20,1961, the Thai Prime Minister, Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat,cracked. He said Prince Sihanouk’s words at a Tokyo pressconference,

clearly showed that there was a plan which may serve as a bridge to induce[chakjungao] Communists to harm [tham ray] neighbors, which was a treach-ery [kanthorayot] to the nations of Southeast Asia. . . . The governmentshould pay careful attention to dangers coming from this region and, at thesame time, we can ignore his arrogance by reflecting, by way of consolation,on the old tale of a pig who provoked a lion into combat. (Smith, 1965:147–8; Thai in FAB Oct.–Nov., 1(2): 25, 1961)

Prince Sihanouk was furious. He went before the CambodianNational Assembly on 23 October 1961 and obtained their vote tobreak diplomatic relations. The difference between Thailand andCambodia was now as stark as it could be.

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But it was a difference articulated in the monstrous doubling ofally and neutral, as the longing to trade places and the logic of con-structing nationhood from negative difference fed off each other. Itthus proposed to the World Court an inherently false choice. Thedynamic of ally and neutral at least allowed some flexibility of tempo,but whichever side the Court took, it could only raise the stakesdecisively and force violence beyond a state of alert and into a stateof emergency. Yet the World Court, set up precisely to judge disputesbetween nation states, was necessarily blinded to this false choice.Indeed, through its rhetoric of self-consistent nations with a duty toprotest, it seemed to incite violent inscription of unmistakeablenational differences in the name, ironically enough, of internationallaw.

After considering ‘a Portia-like (Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice)attitude’ of ‘Take the Temple, remove it, but not a single grain ofThai earth must be taken away,’ (Bangkok Post, 22 June 1962) theThai Government decided to comply with the ICJ decision ‘underprotest and with reservation of her intrinsic rights,’ that is, ‘whateverrights Thailand has, or may have in the future, to recover the Templeof Phra Viharn by having recourse to any existing or subsequentlyapplicable legal process’.4 The Thai flag was never lowered at PhraViharn, but the ‘flag and flagpole were removed from the temple ina standing position and placed in a museum.’ In the Thai press,Prince Sihanouk and his followers were reviled as ‘the inheritors ofevil French tradition’ (Singh, 1962: 26). On the very day that thePortia stand was discussed in the Bangkok Post, Reuter of RadioPhnom Penh reported that ‘The soul of a late Princess, member ofthe Cambodian Royal Family, reincarnated in the body of a sorcerer,predicted that Thailand would cause Cambodia more trouble inthree or four months’ (cited in FAB 2(2) Oct.–Nov. 1962: 177). Theghost seems to have understood in her own way that the disavowedviolence constituting the national state would come haunting fromthe future. In 1966 there were 300 frontier incidents and 320 deador wounded. April of 1966 saw battle at Preah Vihear itself. In July1970, with the Lon Nol regime in power in Cambodia, Thai planesretraced the aerial photography flightpaths used to map the frontierand bombed Communist targets in the Temple area (Jha, 1979: 117,121). And, recalling the World Court judgment that ‘Thailand did

4 July 3 Communique, Information Office of the Prime Minister; July 6 letter byMinister of Foreign Affairs to UN Acting Secretary General.

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nothing,’ an event took place at Preah Vihear in June 1979, almost17 years to the day after the ICJ decision.

Loaded with Cambodian refugees from temporary camp sites all over east-ern Thailand, hundreds of buses converged on a mountainous region of thenortheastern border near the temple of Preah Vihear, whose ownership hadlong been a source of bitter dispute between Thailand and Cambodia. Theyarrived, with military precision, after dark.

The border had been sealed off by Thai soldiers; the area was flooded withtroops. The refugees were ordered, busload by busload, to walk back intoCambodia. They were told there was a path down the mountains but thaton either side of it there were mine fields. They were also told that on theother side the Vietnamese army was waiting to welcome them. Thai soldierssaid, ‘Thai money will not be valid in Kampuchea; we ask you to make avoluntary contribution to our army.’

The path down the mountains became steeper, the jungle thicker. Dozens,scores of people fell onto mines. Those with possessions had to abandonthem to carry their children down. . . . For days this operation went on.Altogether, between 43,000 and 45,000 people were pushed down the cliffsat Preah Vihear. It took three days to cross the mine field . . .

One refugee who finally managed to escape back to Thailand told UNHCRofficials: ‘The crowd was very dense. It was impossible to number the victimsof the land mines. The wounded people were moaning. Tears I thought haddried up long ago came back to my eyes—less because of the sight thanfrom the thought that those innocent people had paid with their lives fortheir attempts to reach freedom in a world that was too selfish.’

. . . Throughout the rest of June and early July the refugees remained inthe no man’s land of Preah Vihear . . .

What did the UN high Commissioner for Refugees do on their behalf: FromGeneva there was silence. From Bangkok, inaction. (Shawcross, 1984: 89–91)

A Haunted Landscape

The World Court repressed the constitutive founding violence of thenation state in another way by ignoring the regional history andexperiences of local people. This seemed only natural, since onlyStates had standing, and indeed the disavowed violence of state con-solidation escaped into the natural surroundings. Long before theKhmer Rouge’s Year One, the familiar world of the inhabitants of

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the Forest Khmer Domains where Preah Vihear stood was eroding.In the opening years of the century which ICJ scrutinized so closelyfor signs of sovereignty and administration, a history of state violenceand millennial rebellion remained invisible in the eyes of judges andlawyers. In their eyes, nonetheless, there was something ‘forbidding’about the landscape.

The region to the immediate north of the escarpment dominating the Cam-bodian plains was forbidding and remained so. A few people apparently fromtime to time eked out an existence there. The whole district along the escarp-ment on the Dangrek was covered with sparse forests and stunted trees andwas, in Colonel Bernard’s view, ‘despairingly monotonous.’ After the summerrains it swarmed with game. In the dry season ‘there could not be,’ he says,‘a more desolate landscape.’ The rivers were dry and ‘water was only to befound in loathsome pools where all the wild animals come to drink.’ (SirPercy Spender, Judgment, 138; emphasis mine)

Sir Frank Soskice also commented that whenever Counsel for Cam-bodia approached the evidence for sovereign control, ‘they give theirown description in general terms of the nature of the disputed terri-tory. From this they draw the inference that no governmental activitywould be expected there, except activity of one particular kind[French archaeology] of which they happen to have evidence . . . Thisis what Professor Reuter was doing when he dwelt upon the lack ofwater at Phra Viharn, the absence of a regular population, the diffi-culties of access, and so on’ (Pleadings, 637). But as undaunted asa colonial explorer, Professor Reuter nevertheless proceeded topopulate this desolate place with his own image of elephant huntingwhile contesting a piece of Thai evidence concerning a provincialpermit for catching wild elephants.

After a short disquisition upon the usual methods employed for catchingelephants, he expressed the opinion that these methods could only be usedon level ground. Having had the privilege of hearing Professor Reuter’sargument in this case, I should never be surprised to be told that he wasan authority on some hitherto unsuspected subject; so it may be that he isan expert on the hunting of elephants in the forests of Thailand. (Sir FrankSoskice, Pleadings, 640)

So much for the Parisian elephant hunter. But the disputed regionis in fact the land of peoples including the Kui [gooy], some of whomare elephant hunters.

Erik Seidenfaden, who was Deputy Inspector General of the Pro-vincial Gendarmerie from 1908 to 1919, patrolled the area of north-eastern Siam where the Temple of Preah Vihear stands. He wrote

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a paper entitled ‘The Kui of Cambodia and Siam’ in 1952, whichpointed out that ‘In spite of many hundreds of years of oppressionby the Khmers, the Kui have preserved their own language and cus-toms. They must have occupied vast territories formerly, and it wasalmost certainly from them that the Khmers wrested the land lyingto the west of the Mekhong and northeast of the great inland lake(Thale Sap) (Seidenfaden, 1952: 147). The Khmers called thesegroups ‘Kui’ but the Thai and Lao called them ‘Suai,’ meaning trib-ute. As this tribute often included elephants, the prowess of theirelephant hunters was renowned, and ‘the Kui of Surin are stillaccounted among the best elephant hunters of Siam’ (Seidenfaden,1952: 146). Seidenfaden also mentioned that ‘Phra Vihar, which,like an eagle’s nest, crowns a spur of the Dong Rek hills, was mostprobably built by Kui corvee labor’ (Seidenfaden, 1952: 146). Indeed,the Kui Damrei (damrei is Khmer for elephant) ‘live nearest to theDangrek range’ (Seidenfaden, 1952: 154). Most significant for thisexploration of landscape, when Seidenfaden came to speak of theSiamese province of Srisaket, which adjoins the Temple of PreahVihear, he mentioned the villages ‘from which came the leader ofthe fanatical Phu-mi-bun uprising in 1903’ and added, ‘A muchsmaller and less dangerous movement broke out in amphoe Kantra-raks [site of the Temple] in 1916, the leader of this movement alsodeclaring himself to be the possessor of supernatural powers. Suchideas are very characteristic of the—in a spiritual sense—somewhatunbalanced Kha or Moi population of the wild back lands of Cam-bodia, Annam, and Laos’ (Seidenfaden, 1952: 167).

Major Seidenfaden was referring to the millenarian uprisings thatswept throughout the region, most notably the Holy Men’s Rebellionof 1901–1902. These movements transcended the recently imposedand volatile borders of Siam and Indochina, just as Kui people werescattered on both sides of every border. As a recent Thai-languagestudy of the Kui people put it, the Kui ‘are the same tribal group[klumchatphan] as the groups of Kha or Lawa, but neighboring peoplescall them different names . . . for example, the Thai in Laos callthem Kha, the Thai in northern Thailand call them Lawa, theKhmer in Cambodia call them Kui or Koy, and the Thai of Thailandcall them Suai’ (Cheun, 1990: 26). It was these Austroasiatic tribalgroups of Kha and Kui throughout northeast Siam, Laos and Cam-bodia that were involved in movements known to Thai historiographyas the Holy Men’s Rebellion [khabot phumibun]. At the time, the Thaicentral government in Bangkok was striving to consolidate its control

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of the provinces under the threat of French colonial ambitions toexpand the territory of Indochina. In 1897, a complete overhaul ofthe bureaucratic organization of Siam, the Thesaphiban reforms, wasenacted. In the northeastern region where the Kui lived, fear ofFrench aggression combined with opposition to the newly imposed,centralized national order to fuel millenarian aspirations for a newworld where the people could be free of both Siam and France.

The end of the world as they knew it was set for March 23, 1902,according to the millennial vision of phumibun [men with merit] andphuwiset [miracle men]. Many of these leaders were monks or formermonks. Their message, spread by molam [singing troubadours],prophesied a wind-storm, and darkness for seven days and sevennights,

gold and silver would become pebbles, pebbles would become gold andsilver; pigs and buffaloes would become man-eating yaksa [giant demons];and Thao Thammikarat [Lord Righteous Ruler], the meritful person wouldappear in this world. (Damrong Rajanubhab, cited in Paitoon, 1984: 139)

People were therefore instructed to collect gravel ‘so that the ThaoThammikarat can transform them into gold and silver,’ and ‘if one isafraid of death, one should kill albino buffalo and pigs before themiddle of the sixth month to prevent them from being transformedinto yaksa’ (cited in Murdoch, 1974: 59). The reaction to the holymen was intense. Phra Yannarakkit, the highest ranking monk ofthe region, and Director of Education, noted in February of 1902that from Ubon Ratchatani to Sangkha, no one could speak of any-thing but the phumibun, and ‘rice in the fields remained unharvestedand cattle and buffaloes were allowed to eat it’ (cited in Keyes, 1977:297).

On the Indochinese side, it was French colonialism rather thanSiamese centralization that threatened to eliminate local elites andcustomary practices. And if hostility between Indochina and Siamthreatened to disrupt the Kui proclivity for crossing borders on ele-phant hunts, the French colonial government was even more hostileto another border-breaking business among some of its tribal groups:the slave trade. On May 29, 1901, the Sedang of the Kontum Plateauinvolved in the Annamite (Vietnamese) slave trade killed the mili-tary officer sent there to stop it. The Frenchman, named Robert, wasspeared 20 times (Murdoch, 1974: 56). Another Frenchman namedMenard was killed by Kha between Saravane and Bassac, apparentlyfor his interference with the Bolovens Plateau slave trade of theLoven tribes in Laos, and Saigon’s L’Opinion reported that ‘his head,

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hands and feet were cut off and displayed in a bird cage’ (Murdoch,1974: 550). Perhaps violence erupting over the slave trade spilledover into the tense relations between the French authorities andmarginalized tribes, igniting a fuse soaked with millennial proph-ecies. In any case, it seems millennial movements first flared intoviolence in French Laos. Ong Keo, who led the uprising there, wasfrom the Kha group Alak. Ong Keo and Loven chiefs Komadam andKomaseng started appearing on white cotton panels as meritoriousfigures. By June of 1901, many people from Laos were involved,including the Uppahat (the second highest ruling official) of Attapeu,the area from which many of the Kui had migrated in the 17thcentury to live areas now under Siamese control. Joining this groupwas Ong Wan or Ong Man, who became a leader on the Thai side.On March 28, 1902, Ong Man led his followers to rob and burn theSiamese town of Khemmarat where they executed two officials andtook the governor prisoner (Murdoch, 1974: 57). Before the rebel-lions could become an excuse for French invasion, the Siamese gov-ernment responded forcefully. The regional Commissioner Sanphas-itthaprasong called for 400 soldiers from Nakhon Ratchasima: 200by way of Surin, who divided into 100 to Sisaket and 100 to Ubon,and 200 by way of Suwannaphum, who divided into 100 to Roi Et and100 to Yasothon. On April 12, 1902, the soldiers at Ubon formed anambush at Baan Sapheu in which 300 were killed and 400 werecaptured (Murdoch, 1974: 59). There were many other outbreaks.Ultimately 3 leaders were arrested in Surin and 4 in Sisaket; a pettyofficial in Sangkha and another rebel leader in Sikoraphum were alsocaptured with about 400 other rebels. All leaders were put to death,except for three who were ordered to remain in the monkhood forlife. All the followers were ordered to perform the ceremony ofdrinking the holy water of allegiance and then released(Paitoon,1984: 145–6). The violence on the Indochinese side lastedlonger. Ong Keo’s old ally Khomadam continued with armed resist-ance, and was finally killed in an attack in January of 1936. His sonSi Thon, however, was in 1974 the Vice Chair of the Pathet Lao forthe Southern Hill People, causing no end of consternation in thecrises of Laos that haunted Southeast Asian governments at the timeof the case concerning the Temple of Preah Vihear (Murdoch, 1974:60–1).

Thus despite the appearance of prompt suppression, both colonialFrench in Indochina and internally colonializing Thai in Siam, whenlooking at Kui peoples, sensed weird beliefs and savage passions justbeneath the surface. Thai historian Tej Bunnag concluded that

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Although the government was able to suppress the Holy Men’s Rebellionquickly, the story of phumibun could not be seen to conclude as promptly.Prince Sanphasitthiprasong himself ordered that ‘About these rebel groups,understand that they still have smart people . . . who do not show their face[mai auk na] and go about freely [thieo] because many more groups proceedquietly [pai ngiap-ngiap].’ Which means that a military victory [chaichanathang thahan] is not truly a definite victory [mi chai chaichana yang dedkhat].(Tej, 1967: 28, original in Thai)

In the Cold War period, it seemed natural to recollect these memor-ies in conjuring up the need for counter-insurgency and frontier-control in this landscape of hidden threats. In addition, Seidenfadenfound the Cahiers of l’Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient to be replete withreferences conflating the beliefs of marginalized tribesmen with viol-ent tendencies.

The Katu is an animist with violent passions who believes firmly in sorcery.The outcome of such passions and superstitions is murder and cruelty. In 1937a revolt broke out due to superstition. This time it was about some miraculouswater obtained from a python god. It made people invulnerable and pro-tected the world against the cataclysm of the three flaming suns, etc. Thisreminds me of the Phu mi bun movement in northeast Thailand in 1902where like superstitions were indulged in. The Kha or Moi killed all whiteanimals and left everything in order to obtain this miraculous water.(Seidenfaden, 1941: 45; emphasis mine)

The violence throughout the region from 1902 to 1937 was thusseen as a continuous stream of superstitious brutality. ‘This time’miraculous water was the cause, just as earlier ‘like superstitionswere indulged in.’ But since these superstitions mark the tracesof state-sanctioned violence under erasure, the possibility remainsthat Katu, Kha, Moi, or Kui were precipitated into aggression bythe disavowed violence of the colonial state. This masking of theviolence of rule as bloody custom has been identified by MichaelTaussig as a general property of colonialism, ‘the mimicry by thecolonizer of the savagery imputed to the savage’ is dubbed ‘thecolonial mirror of production’ (Taussig, 1993: 66). Amidst a his-tory of gunsmoke and colonial mirrors, the dominated landscapeemerged haunted, bearing a watershed that would run withblood.

Picturesque Ruins and Uneasy Ghosts

In this journey among the ghosts that haunted the case of PreahVihear at the World Court, we have examined at exhausting

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length the threat in mimesis and the violence of the nation state.We have seen the ghostly ways difference is recuperated withininternational law to reinscribe colonial-type relations of power. Wehave seen how systematically disavowed violence, whether arisingfrom the monstrous symmetry of the dynamic between ally andneutral, or evident in the founding traumas of modern statehood,returns to haunt from the future or escapes to bathe the landscapein a mist of wildness and desolation. As if on pilgrimage to MountPreah Vihear, we have reached the top of the broken staircase.But can we find an alternative solution? Perhaps, as a pragmaticmatter, since Thailand and Cambodia have brought only bloodand bitterness to this place, it might be desirable to preserve itfrom both. It could be given back to nature and the indigenouspeoples, to be managed cooperatively between the two govern-ments in equal partnership with local communities, as a trans-border Protected Landscape, Anthropological Reserve—NaturalBiotic Area and/or Multiple Use—Managed Resource Area (IUCNcategories V, VII and VIII). But the deeper issue about facing upto and living wisely with the violence of law, the state, and repres-entation is not a question with a clear, painless, or stable answer.At the very least, having climbed the broken staircase, it requiresa refusal to view the Temple of Preah Vihear as a picturesqueruin, a spectacle for tourists showcased as a world heritage siteand exhibited as a poignant testimony to the grandeur of anancient civilization. Such celebration of ruins would draw its powerfrom ideas of the Picturesque developed in Europe during the ageof colonialism and deployed in the heritage tourism of today. Asa perceptive critic of the politics of the Picturesque has written,‘The fear of and containment of violence is paramount in thePicturesque and is best expressed in the period’s obsession withruins. The ruin is an object which has sustained violence, be itthe violence of man or simply the violence of time, but thisviolence is mitigated by being placed in a distant and unrecover-able past’ (Modiano, 1994: n18). We must insist instead that theviolence on the border is relatively recent, a poignant testimonyto the grandeur of our modern civilization, and that unless theeveryday lives of local people are not recovered as a picturesqueruin by the workings of a culturally complacent heritage conserva-tion, the ghosts of the temple will persist to haunt restlessly theforgetfulness of present times.

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