Ethnic groups in Cambodia
The largest of the ethnic groups in Cambodia are the Khmer, who comprise 95.8% of the total population[1] and primarily inhabit the lowland Mekong subregion and the central plains.
The Khmer historically have lived near the lower Mekong River in a contiguous arc that runs from the southern Khorat Plateau where modern-day Thailand, Laos and Cambodia meet in the northeast, stretching southwest through the lands surrounding Tonle Sap lake to the Cardamom Mountains, then continues back southeast to the mouth of the Mekong River in southeastern Vietnam.
Most archaeologists and linguists, and other specialists like Sinologists and crop experts, believe they arrived no later than 2000 BCE (over four thousand years ago) bringing with them the practice of agriculture and in particular the cultivation of rice.
They were the builders of the later Khmer Empire which dominated Southeast Asia for six centuries beginning in 802 CE, and now form the mainstream of political, cultural, and economic Cambodia.
The Khmers are considered by most archaeologists and ethnologists to be indigenous to the contiguous regions of Isan, southernmost Laos, Cambodia and Southern Vietnam.
The Khmers see themselves as being one ethnicity connected through language, history and culture, but divided into three main subgroups based on national origin.
Prior to the Cambodian Civil War, the Vietnamese were the most populous ethnic minority in Cambodia, with an estimated 450,000 living in provinces concentrated in the southeast of the country adjacent to the Mekong Delta.
Following the 1993 withdrawal of Vietnamese troops, the government of modern Cambodia maintained close ties with Vietnam and Vietnamese-backed ventures came to the country looking to capitalize on the new market.
In addition to these mostly urban immigrants, some villagers cross the border illegally, fleeing impoverished rural conditions in Vietnam's socialist one-party state hoping for better opportunities in Cambodia.
During the colonial period, the French brought over Vietnamese middlemen to administer the local Cambodian government, causing further resentment and anti-Vietnamese sentiment that endures to the present.
The Chinese in Cambodia belong to five major linguistic groups, the largest of which is the Teochiu accounting for about 60%, followed by the Cantonese (20%), the Hokkien (7%), and the Hakka and the Hainanese (4% each).
Consequently, notwithstanding the relatively recent immigration of Khmers back to the area, as of 2010, ethnic Lao constituted more than half the population of Stung Treng, a substantial number (up to 10%) in Ratanakiri and smaller communities in Preah Vihear and Mondulkiri.
[7] Little is known about the precise origins of the Kola people[8] who, prior to the Civil War, constituted a significant minority in Pailin Province, where they have visibly influenced the local culture.
[citation needed] As they journeyed through Burma and Northern Thailand during this turbulent period, they were joined by individuals from the Mon, Pa'O and various other Burmese groups, primarily from Moulmein.
The Kola language, which is a Creole based on Shan and Dai and includes words from Lanna, Burmese and Karen,[citation needed] has influenced the local Khmer dialect in Pailin in both tone and pronunciation.
[10] The Kola in Pailin were historically active in the lucrative gem trading business and were the most prosperous ethnic group in the region before the war.
As the Khmer Rouge, whose official policy was to persecute all non-Khmer ethnic groups, took control of Pailin, the Kola fled across the border into Thailand.
[10] In the northwest of the country, approximately 5000 Tai Phuan live in their own villages in Mongkol Borey District of Banteay Meanchey Province.
[11] The Cham are descendants of a sea-faring Austronesian people from the islands of Southeast Asia who, 2000 years ago, began settling along the central coast of present-day Vietnam and, by 200 AD, had begun building the various polities that would become the kingdom of Champa,[14] which at its zenith from the eighth to tenth centuries controlled most of what is today the south of Vietnam and exerted influence as far north as present-day Laos.
Champa was conquered by Dai Viet (Vietnam) in the late 15th century and much of its territory was annexed while thousands of Cham were enslaved or executed.
These migrations continued for the next 400 years as the Vietnamese slowly chipped away at the remains of Champa until the last vestige of the kingdom was annexed by Vietnam in the late 19th century.
The Cham in Cambodia number approximately a quarter of a million and often maintain separate villages although in many areas they live alongside ethnic Khmers.
[citation needed] The Cham were one of the ethnic groups marked as targets of persecution under the Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia.
However, in spite of the moderate Malay form of Islam traditionally practiced by the Chams, the Chams community has recently turned to the Middle East for funding to build mosques and religious schools, which has brought imams from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait teaching fundamentalist interpretations including Da'Wah Tabligh and Wahhabism.
Zhou Daguan remarked that the Khmers had captured hill tribes and made them laborers referring to them as the Tchouang or slave caste.
Prior to the Cambodian Civil War which lasted from between 1970 until the Khmer Rouge victory on April 17, 1975, there were an estimated 30,000 colons, or French citizens living in the country.
During this time Cambodia was isolated from the Western world, however visitors from states with ties to the Soviet bloc trickled into the country in (albeit) small numbers.
After the United Nations helped restore the monarchy in the early 1990s, the number of Western individuals (termed barang by the Khmer) living in the country swelled into the tens of thousands.
