History
Explorators
Jerome ROUER-Dec 96-June 97.
The origins of Angkor remain a mystery. Since the beginning of this century, by dint of scholarly research, a chronology has been reconstructed. The temples are dated and attributed to kings. But there remain a number of questions and gaps. Who was the founding power of this civilization, whence it, how people lived? We have some Chinese texts for the periods Founan and Chenla, then nothing between X ° and 1295, end of the great Angkor period. Many travelers have passed between the fifteenth and nineteenth, but their writings, mostly undiscovered. Bruno Daggens in his little guide Gallimard, "Angkor, the Stone Forest" offers a brilliant cultural synthesis. Dominique Berard wrote a delightful anthology of texts by French authors. (Available on diskette in SYFED.REFER Phnom Penh)
• TA-Kuan Chou (1296) (time of Marco Polo)
TA-Kuan Chou, Zhou Daguan also called, was one of the leaders of a Chinese Embassy in the Yuan Dynasty. He spent nearly a year in Cambodia and visited Angkor in 1296, at the end of the historically famous Angkor: we know nothing about the kings who reigned thirty-one years later, from 1327 to 1432, when the Taking of Angkor by the Siamese. His paper, entitled Memoirs of the customs of Cambodia, which in 1902 will wait for proper translation (by Paul Pelliot), remains the fundamental writing and richer for the understanding of the habits and customs of the time.
• Other Spanish and Portuguese missionaries from 1550
Diego do Couto is the author of a precise description of Angkor Wat written around 1550 but was not published until 1958! (Diego de Couto speaks of a "city which had lost even the memory" during an elephant hunt "in the thickest forests," the king's men, "beating the bush, gave on important buildings, overgrown within a lush bush ".." The king, struck with admiration, decided on the field to carry his court.
The Dominican Portuguese Gaspar de Cruz is staying in Cambodia in 1556.
This plan will be discovered in Japan in 1911.
• Father Charles-Emile Bouillevaux (1823/1913)
He lived between Bangkok and Battambang. It was "The first tourists to Angkor. His descriptions, published in France in 1857 (Travels in Indochina 1848-1856, L'Annam and Cambodia) used to Henri Mouhot ...
• Henri Mouhot (1860)
French naturalist and explorer, on a mission for the British Royal Geographic Society, Mouhot was the first Westerner to brag to the public the wonders of Angkor (1861). His descriptions published in France in the newspaper "World Tour" and the Library Rose after his death caused a sensation in Laos.
• Adolf Bastian (1863)
German ethnographer. It was the first to combine the architectural style of India monuments of Angkor.
• Douart of Lagree (1860) and the Mekong Mission
Polytechnique, sailor, leading actor of the Protectorate of France on Cambodia (1863) which included then the Angkor region. Four years later, when he was on a mission to explore the upper Mekong Francis Garnier, a secret treaty Franco-Siamese ceded the provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap to Siam, which in return, abandoned all claims on the rest of Cambodia. These provinces will be returned to Cambodia in 1907. Her first mission to Cambodia carried over Angkor and other archaeological sites He is the first detailed plan of the temples. The mission of Doudart Lagree-Garnier (1866-1868) was to explore the upper Mekong to open a route to China. He died in 1868, during this mission, in Yunnan.
• J. Moura Moura was the first to attempt a reconstruction of the royal lines of Cambodia. His work is still essential. (See Annals royal)
• Auguste Pavie (1847-1925)
• Pierre Loti (1850-1923)
• Louis Delaporte (1873)
Designer clever fellow Douart Lagree of whom he succeeded as head of the mission of the Mekong, it was then in charge of a mission school on the Khmer monuments which he published under the title "Travel Cambodia ".
Its shipments of statues and carvings of stampings in France accelerate knowledge of Angkor. He struggles a lot to Paris to learn Khmer art. Angkor Wat was designed by Louis Delaporte ............. With Delaporte ends the era of explorers, begins the tourists and scientists ...
• Aymonier Etienne (1844-1929) and Marin
epigraphist it is the first inventory of the monuments of Cambodia.
Resident General of the Protectorate, author of a study in three volumes on Cambodia, which gives the first translations of the inscriptions found on the site.
Lunet of Jonquiere, continuing the work Aymonier, numbered lists and 910 monuments.
• 1899: Founding of the French School of Far East in 1908 which created the Conservation d'Angkor.
Read chapter "Conservation" of the document "Background on the temples"
• George Groslier
See detailed monograph.
