Author David Chandler covers two thousand years of Cambodian history in a candid and concise assessment that focuses on transformation and the historic implications and myths surrounding these changes. This clear and concise volume provides a timely overview of Cambodia, a small but increasingly visible Southeast Asian nation. Hailed by the Journal of Asian Studies as an "original contribution, superior to any other existing work," this acclaimed text has now been completely revised and updated to include material examining the early history of Cambodia, whose famous Angkorean ruins now attract more than one million tourists each year, the death of Pol Pot, and the revolution and final collapse of the Khmer Rouge. The fourth edition reflects recent research by major scholars as well as Chandler's long immersion in the subject, including new material covering the challenges facing Cambodia today. This comprehensive overview of Cambodia will illuminate, for undergraduate students as well as general readers, the history and contemporary politics of a country long misunderstood.

This volume explores activism, research and critique in the age of digital subjects and objects and Big Data capitalism after a digital turn said to have radically transformed our political futures. Optimists assert that the 'digital' promises: new forms of community and ways of knowing and sensing, innovation, participatory culture, networked activism, and distributed democracy. Pessimists argue that digital technologies have extended domination via new forms of control, networked authoritarianism and exploitation, dehumanization and the surveillance society. Leading international scholars present varied interdisciplinary assessments of such claims – in theory and via dialogue – and of the digital's impact on society and the potentials, pitfalls, limits and ideologies, of digital activism. They reflect on whether computational social science, digital humanities and ubiquitous datafication lead to digital positivism that threatens critical research or lead to new horizons in theory and society.

The modern states of Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, and East Timor were once a tapestry of kingdoms, colonies, and smaller polities linked by sporadic trade and occasional war. Their societies shared many elements but also centered on traditions as diverse as Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, and Christianity. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the United States and several European powers had come to control almost the entire region—only to depart dramatically in the decades following World War II. The emergence of modern Southeast Asia raises many questions, specific and general. Why were the great royal capitals—Hue, Ava, Ayutthaya, Yogyakarta—relegated to obscurity? What led the Vietnamese, at great cost in human suffering, to fight the French, the Americans, and each other for thirty years, and what did the revolutionaries do when they won? How did Southeast Asians live together and how were their lives—and dreams—changed by new forms of authority and new modes of production? What are the region’s economic resources, who controls them and benefits from them, and how have they and their distribution changed over time?
The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia offers a new and up-to-date perspective on this complex region. Although it does not neglect nation-building (the central theme of its popular and long-lived predecessor, In Search of Southeast Asia), the present work focuses on economic and social history, gender, and ecology. It describes the long-term impact of global forces on the region and traces the spread and interplay of capitalism, nationalism, and socialism. It acknowledges that modernization has produced substantial gains in such areas as life expectancy and education but has also spread dislocation and misery. Technology means helicopter gun ships and government surveillance as well as jet travel and the Internet. As the region’s economies have grown, the environment has become polluted and natural resources have been savagely exploited.
Organizationally, the book shifts between thematic chapters that describe social, economic, and cultural change, and "country" chapters emphasizing developments within specific areas. Enhanced by scores of illustrations, The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia will establish a new standard for the history of this dynamic and radically transformed region of the world. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The horrific torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the 1970s is one of the century's major human disasters. David Chandler, a world-renowned historian of Cambodia, examines the Khmer Rouge phenomenon by focusing on one of its key institutions, the secret prison outside Phnom Penh known by the code name 'S-21'. The facility was an interrogation center where more than 14,000 'enemies' were questioned, tortured, and made to confess to counterrevolutionary crimes. Fewer than a dozen prisoners left S-21 alive. During the Democratic Kampuchea (DK) era, the existence of S-21 was known only to those inside it and a few high-ranking Khmer Rouge officials. When invading Vietnamese troops discovered the prison in 1979, murdered bodies lay strewn about and instruments of torture were still in place. An extensive archive containing photographs of victims, cadre notebooks, and "DK" publications was also found. Chandler utilizes evidence from the S-21 archive as well as materials that have surfaced elsewhere in Phnom Penh. He also interviews survivors of S-21 and former workers from the prison. Documenting the violence and terror that took place within S-21 is only part of Chandler's story. Equally important is his attempt to understand what happened there in terms that might be useful to survivors, historians, and the rest of us. Chandler discusses the 'culture of obedience' and its attendant dehumanization, citing parallels between the Khmer Rouge executions and the Moscow Show Trails of the 1930s, Nazi genocide, Indonesian massacres in 1965-66, the Argentine military's use of torture in the 1970s, and the recent mass killings in Bosnia and Rwanda. In each of these instances, Chandler shows how turning victims into 'others' in a manner that was systematically devaluing and racialist made it easier to mistreat and kill them. More than a chronicle of Khmer Rouge barbarism, "Voices from S-21" is also a judicious examination of the psychological dimensions of state-sponsored terrorism that conditions human beings to commit acts of unspeakable brutality.

Osprey's examination of one of the most crucial battles of the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). Austerlitz was the battle that established Napoleon's reputation: a classic example of the general's masterly use of deception to lure his enemy into a carefully devised trap. Beginning with the bold and crushing advance of the French Army from the Rhine to the Danube, David Chandler describes the envelopment of Mack's army at Ulm, the manoeuvres to Austerlitz and the counter-attack that resulted in the decisive defeat for the Austro-Russian Army. Excellent overview illustrations of the battlefield at Austerlitz supplement the text by clearly showing the movements of the opposing armies.

Race in the Anthropocene provides a radical new perspective on the importance of race and coloniality in the Anthropocene. It forwards the Black Horizon as a critical lens which places at its heart the importance of ontological concerns fundamental to problematising the violences and exclusions of the antiblack world.At present, multiple new approaches are emerging through the shared problem field of Anthropocene thought and policy, offering to save not just the world, but the practice of governance, the business of Big Data, the progress of development, and the dream of peace. It is against this backdrop that Race in the Anthropocene unsettles not just the already shaky foundations of modernity but also the affirmative visions of its critics, by directing our gaze to how race and coloniality are baked into the grounding concepts of international thought.This book is essential reading for students of International Relations, particularly those interested in international politics, security, and development. It is also of relevance for those interested in contemporary social, political, and environmental debates and policy practices.