At the Edge of the Forest: Essays on Cambodia, History and Narrative in Honor of David Chandler is the published version of papers originally presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in 2001. The introductory comments of the conference panel, penned by the late May Ebihara, set the scene for the Festschrift that follows: “David is the major historian of Cambodia” (p. xi).

One need look no further than the fourth edition of A History of Cambodia for confirmation of this appellation; since 1983, it has remained the key text for specialists and the general public alike. The most recent edition contains fresh insights on preclassical and classical Cambodia (third to eighth and ninth to fourteenth centuries), incorporated from the work of the Greater Angkor Project and other scholars of the earliest periods in Cambodian history. The addition of this information does not markedly alter chapters 2–4 from previous editions, but merely updates them.

Chapter 5 remains one of the clearest explanations of the shift of the capital away from “Angkor” to the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Bassac rivers in the south, using a skilful synthesis of the scant primary sources with the analyses that scholars have made of these over the last hundred years or so. The following chapter, spanning the years 1794 to 1848, draws on Chandler's doctoral dissertation in setting the political and cultural scene for the events that led to Cambodia's essential cessation as an autonomous political entity in the following century. Chapter 7, “The Crisis of the Nineteenth Century,” skillfully navigates the interwoven fates of the Cambodian elite at this time, caught between the far stronger Nguyen and Chakri dynasties.

Chapter 8 explores the establishment of French control in Cambodia, drawing on the work carried out by John Tully and Penny Edwards since the third edition was published. Edwards's research similarly informs the history of the development of Cambodian nationalism (and communism) given in chapter 9, which continues the French colonial period until the brief period of Japanese rule in 1945. Chapter 10 encompasses the attempt to establish political pluralism in Cambodia in the late 1940s and 1950s, and the role that Norodom Sihanouk had in fostering and discouraging democracy—often simultaneously.

Chapter 11 looks at the various policies, deals, and opinions entered into by Sihanouk between 1955 and 1970, and how these alternately shaped and were shaped by regional events. The short-lived Khmer Republic (1970–75), headed by Lon Nol and Prince Sirik Matak, is also included in this chapter. The so-called Khmer Rouge period (1975–79) is dealt with in chapter 12, updated by the recent research of John Marston and Henri Locard. The final chapter looks at the period since 1979, including the People's Republic of Kampuchea regime (1979–89), the State of Cambodia and the peace process involving the parties in exile (1989–91), the UNTAC (United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia) period (1992–94), and Cambodia at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Chandler's extensive notes and bibliography are a gift to scholars, while the readable text and clarity of expression make the book accessible to the Cambodian studies novice. Since 2007, the book has been available in Khmer translation—one of the few English-language histories of Cambodia to receive such treatment—and it is a testament to its local popularity that it is now in its second Khmer-language edition.

Equally evident is the impact of Chandler's work on successive generations of scholars. In At the Edge of the Forest, historians, anthropologists, and cultural studies specialists transcend geographic and disciplinary difference in eight essays authored in response to Chandler's essay “Songs at the Edge of the Forest: Perceptions of Order in Three Cambodian Texts,” originally written in 1978 and first published in 1982. One of these texts is a chronicle dating to 1856; the other two pieces are folktales, transmitted orally over generations until their eventual documentation by the Buddhist Institute in the twentieth century. Placing these within their social and political contexts, Chandler concludes in his essay that “there were two contrasting perceptions of moral order in early nineteenth-century Cambodia… . [A] moral order for everyone … on the one hand, and perceptions rooted in the real world, on the other” (p. 44).

The contributors take up this theme in a variety of intellectually engaging ways after several short introductory pieces contextualizing the book project, Chandler's life, and his work. Chandler then gives a reflexive introduction to the full text of the original “Songs” before the response essays. Anne Ruth Hansen and Alexander Laban Hinton provide two chapters on violence and disorder in the Khmer worldview as expressed in narrative and song. Ashley Thompson, in perhaps the most innovative essay of the collection, addresses questions of academic lineage (and Chandler's own in relation to Paul Mus) and discipline in her study of the supernatural world and access to it. Sokhieng Au and Penny Edwards contend with seemingly static local and colonial views toward medicine and place, respectively.

John Marston draws analogies between Chandler's idea of social order versus disorder in “Songs” and “a popular perception that Buddhism as it is practiced in Cambodia today is not adequate to meet the spiritual needs of the country” (p. 191). Judy Ledgerwood provides a cultural analysis of the hybrid Brahmanical-Buddhist water festival celebrations in Phnom Penh under supposedly pragmatic socialist leaders in 1990. Finally, Erik W. Davis candidly discusses his histoire imaginaire conversations with Chandler in the course of writing his essay, in which he points out that “Cambodian literature has a tendency to kill off its mothers” (p. 229) before turning to real and historical or narrative examples which demonstrate agency between the lines.

Some readers of this Festschrift may find it curious that the majority of the authors are grounded in anthropology and cultural studies rather than history, yet this is a further tribute to Chandler's impact as a scholar. Nobody seeking to unravel the complexities of Cambodia today can do so without referencing Chandler's framework of the past. Of the two books here reviewed, A History of Cambodia will attract the greater following, but it is in At the Edge of the Forest that Chandler's legacy is realized: “another generation of scholars in love with Cambodia is hard at work examining its present, its thought world, and its past, helping us to understand what I once called the songs at the edge of the forest, and teaching even younger people the words” (p. 27).