This pioneering study of the fate of Buddhism during the communist period in Cambodia puts a human face on a dark period in Cambodia’s history. It is the first sustained analysis of the widely held assumption that the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot had a centralized plan to liquidate the entire monastic order. Based on a thorough analysis of interview transcripts and a large body of contemporary manuscript material; it offers a nuanced view that attempts to move beyond the horrific monastic death toll and fully evaluate the damage to the Buddhist sangha under Democratic Kampuchea.Compelling evidence exists to suggest that Khmer Rouge leaders were determined to hunt down senior members of the pre-1975 ecclesiastical hierarchy; but other factors also worked against the Buddhist order. Buddhism in a Dark Age outlines a three-phase process in the Khmer Rouge treatment of Buddhism: bureaucratic interference and obstruction; explicit harassment; and finally the elimination of the obdurate and those close to the previous Lon Nol regime. The establishment of a separate revolutionary form of sangha administration constituted the bureaucratic phase. The harassment of monks; both individually and en masse; was partially due to the uprooting of the traditional monastic economy in which lay people were discouraged from feeding economically unproductive monks. Younger members of the order were disrobed and forced into marriage or military service. The final act in the tragedy of Buddhism under the Khmer Rouge was the execution of those monks and senior ecclesiastics who resisted.It was difficult for institutional Buddhism to survive the conditions encountered during the decade under study here. Prince Sihanouk’s overthrow in 1970 marked the end of Buddhism as the central axis around which all other aspects of Cambodian existence revolved and made sense. And under Pol Pot the lay population was strongly discouraged from providing its necessary material support. The book concludes with a discussion of the slow re-establishment and official supervision of the Buddhist order during the People’s Republic of Kampuchea period.
#3143062 in Books University of Hawaii Press 2000-11-01 2000-11-01Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.21 x 1.13 x 6.14l; 2.11 #File Name: 0824821688512 pages
Review
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Typhoon is a wonderful piece of historiographyBy Bruce M. PettyThe three authors of The Typhoon Of War; Poyer; Falgout; and Carrucci; have done an excellent job of researching and writing a wonderful piece of seamless historiography. Not only that; but they have written on a subject that has been left relatively untouched for too long; the role of Micronesians in World War II; on whose land the Japanese; the Americans; and their allies fought their war in the Pacific.A multitude of books have been written on the subject of World War II in the Pacific; and new volumes continue to be produced every year. Yet; few of these hundreds of books have ever devoted more than a paragraph or two; if that; to what happened to the native people who have inhabited this far flung universe of islands for thousands of years. The Typhoon Of War; has corrected that oversight. For those readers; both professional and lay; who are constantly looking for new insights into the greatest and bloodiest conflict in the history of man will find more here than they might in the multitude of generic texts that have reproduced the same general chronology; ad nauseam; over the past fifty years.I don't know any of the authors; but I am familiar with some of their individual earlier works from which I assume sprang this collective effort. Their bibliography is likewise impressive. They have bypassed little that has gone before them in what up until now has been a rather obscure area of research for all but a few academics. Having lived in the Mariana Islands for five years myself; and having done my own research in the area of World War II oral history amongst the islanders; I see that the authors have also used a variety of unpublished; yet valuable sources; such as the collection of oral histories collected in the 1980s and early 1990s by researchers at the University of Guam; Dr. Dirk Ballendorf; Dr. Don Shuster; and Wakako Higuchi.Much of what I have read in The Typhoon Of War has confirmed what I have concluded from my own research; primarily; that the typhoon of war that swept the islands of Micronesia was the most defining experience of these people since the cataclysmic coming of the Spanish more than 350 years ago.4 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Things I Always Wanted to KnowBy Ronald MayoThe Typhoon of War preserves important information about a people at a time that has received little attention from historians or anthropologist. For me it has opened doors I never even knew were there. As a kid living in Micronesia right after World War II; I didn't conceive that the "natives" would be anything other than eternally grateful for the American presence. I recognized differences between the people of Guam and Truk but it was mainly that some spoke better English; or were darker; and some lived in better houses. That some of them might actually look back to Japanese times as "better" was unthinkable. As I grew older; I began to perceive that perhaps we could have done a better job as saviors/colonizers than we did. Now in retirement I collect books about Micronesia and occasionally travel there. I guess I'm still trying to understand better this place I've been. The Typhoon of War is the book I've been waiting for to do just that.And why should you read this book if you have no interest in Micronesians. It's thick; dense and won't keep you up all night. Here's why; to help you understand how we in America deal with other places (Viet Nam; Bosnia; Africa) and how we might improve our success by actually trying to understand what the people living there think.