PHNOM PENH — Since his first history class at school, Kuong Keany has been fascinated by Cambodia’s history. Here was a country that had dominated the region during the Angkorian era; was one of the region’s most modern and dynamic nations in the 1960s; suffered a genocide during the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s; went through a civil war in the 1980s; and saw peace return in the 1990s.   

The more Keany listened to his history teacher who, he said, had a way of making history come to life at his high school in Kampong Cham province, the more he wanted to know.  

Keany, who was born in 1986, was eager to visit Angkor and to learn about the country’s history and culture over the centuries. He also started to wonder and ask his teacher how Cambodians who had overseen an empire could have ended up with the Khmer Rouge regime taking Cambodia down to Year Zero during their four years in power (1975-1979). 

His eagerness to look into the country’s history led him to make history his career. Over the past 14 year, he has studied history and, after graduating with a master’s degree, has become a university lecturer specializing in Cambodia’s history. He currently is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), and a candidate for a doctoral degree in Khmer Studies at RUPP.

In 2011, Keany had passed a pedagogical teacher entrance exam at the National Institute of Education to be a university lecturer

That year, he had also taken part in the Summer Junior Resident Fellowship Program of the Center for Khmer Studies. The course was “Nation Building after the Khmer Rouge” and was taught by French historian Henri Locard who has researched and written at length on the regime.   

While teaching, Keany continued to pursue a master’s degree in social work. Having a historian background, he said, had enabled him to improve his research and critical thinking skills, which proved useful. “I think that studying history has helped me a lot,” Keany said. 

Detour on the Way to Studying History

Keany’s path to study and teach history did not come without challenges along the way. After graduating from high school in 2004, he applied and failed to obtain a scholarship to pursue a bachelor’s degree in history at RUPP. So, he studied law for one year at another university.     

Keany applied again in 2005 and, this time, obtained a scholarship. So, without hesitation, he dropped out of law school. A decision that, at the time, no one at home, neither his family nor his high school friends, could understand. But he was not about to change his mind. “Since high school, I had loved and wanted to study history,” Keany said.  

This turned out to be far from easy and, at first, he had to work from morning to night on his studies in order to manage. “Most of the documents were in English,” he said. “It was difficult to study them because I had to translate, but that did not mean I could not do it.” Many of Cambodia’s archives and documents of the 1950s and 1960s are in French, while official documents, historians’ studies and books about the following decades are often in English.   

“No matter how difficult, I was determined to keep on researching,” Keany said. “If we do not work hard, when we graduate, we don’t know what to do.” Although he was unsure of what was lying ahead, Keany’s commitment and determination prevailed and this, in spite of his scarce resources and hardship at the time.

Meeting Witnesses of History   

During his 2006-2007 university year, Keany applied and was selected as a volunteer for a field trip of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), a research center whose mission focuses on preserving records on the Khmer Rouge regime and the history and memory of the victims of the regime in power from April 1975 through Jan. 1979. 

Assigned to the project “Searching for the Truth,” Keany’s first mission was field work in Kep province with other history students. His team was tasked to interview survivors of the regime. The team leader gave the volunteers a questionnaire to use to ask them about their lives and experience during Khmer Rouge years, and also to get their views on the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. 

“On the first day, when we saw the people, we didn’t dare talk to them,” he said, as they were concerned about interfering in their lives by asking them to recall and tell what they had lived through. Eventually, Keany walked toward a woman and respectfully asked her whether she would be willing to answer questions.

He soon discovered that she really wanted to tell her story. “Our perception that maybe they didn’t want to talk was wrong,” he said. The students soon realized that people were actually eager to tell what they had lived through during those years. From then on, Keany said, “when we saw people, we went and asked to interview them.” 

During their visit to that community, the students experienced a moment that made them realize that, even years later, people were still carrying the trauma of what they had lived through during the Khmer Rouge regime, a regime that had claimed the life of more than 2 million people.  In the middle of an interview, a person burst into tears as she was telling her story probably for the first time. The team members, including Keany, became nervous and unsure of what to do but to comfort her as much as they could. The interview, which turned out to be short, was an unforgettable experience, Keany said.

Research on Refugee Camps of the 1980s

The experience he had acquired through DC-Cam proved extremely valuable when he conducted research for his university thesis, he said.

Keany had decided to look into a situation on which little historical research had been done: the refugee camps along the Cambodia-Thailand border in the 1980s. They had been set up to shelter the Cambodian refugees who had fled the country when the Vietnamese army, along with a Cambodian division, had forced the Khmer Rouge to flee the country in 1979. The camps would remain in place until the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements in 1991, which put an end to the civil war. 

As Keany realized, there was little information on the living conditions in the camps, and what little he could find was not available in Khmer language. So, in addition to visiting libraries and a research center, he interviewed Cambodians who had lived in the camps, using the skills he had developed through DC-Cam. 

Because whether it is to write about or teach, there is more to history than enumerating facts and dates, Keany said. “Not only knowing, memorizing, or following, but understanding and being able to explain the events in detail,” he said. 

Communicating the Eagerness to Research

As a teacher, he shows his students how to look into and analyze what they read in the context of historical theory, and to find evidence or references to support this. 

Studying a country’s history, Keany said, should include creating new perspectives, exploring innovative ideas, and students being able to express their perceptions and views from different angles. “We teach history to students; we don't want them to just follow,” he said, or repeat what they heard. 

Students should be encouraged to look at facts from different angles, separate facts from opinions or hearsays, and do this from various perspectives in order to analyze facts and draw conclusions, Keany said. When studying or researching history, it is important for students to do so with a rigorous scientific approach, he said.  

For Keany, teaching history is more than a job. For him, passing on to students information on the history of the country is a passion. And something he does with great care. As he explains, one must teach with the right tone, focus and conciseness, he said. 

Rather than putting events in a general context, Keany aims at enabling students to look into history from different perspectives and separate facts from opinions read or heard, he said. In the process, students learn methods and discipline, which is essential to study and research history, he said. 

Because studying history is not only theory: It involves going beyond class, Keany said. Knowing the right place to research is also necessary, which is why he encourages his students to visit historical sites, museums, libraries, and research centers.

Keany’s teaching technique, which combines several approaches, is well received by his students. “I like his method,” said Khoem Samon, a senior history student from Prey Veng province. 

“He has helped us to better grasp what is research,” said Kann Sokroth, a senior history student from Takeo province. 

“He is honest, straight to the point with students,” said Kung Mary, a senior history student from Takeo province. “History is not easy to study; it requires analysis from different perspectives.”

Keany recently took his students on a tour of a research center at a location related to history. Among other things, this visit was meant to help them develop contacts with people in the field and establish connections with researchers. “They can research, they know places, they can find documents, find something or, when they finish school, they will know people, they can volunteer, and so on,” he said. 

This was an opportunity for students to see that studying history is not just to learn dates and facts, and that being a history teacher is also to inspire students to think about what they need to know and research to explain what happened and the reason why, Keany said. “This visit provided us with important and clear information that we did not have before,” said Chan Sreypov, a senior history student from Takeo province. 

Keany has also taught regional history at the Department of International Studies at the Institute of Foreign Languages. During his classes, he spoke of the countries in the region and the relations between them over the centuries. 

Regarding the study of the French Protectorate of 1863 through 1953, many documents are available, which enables history teachers and historians to study the era, Keany said. “I am teaching events as concepts, reflecting as concepts, what ideas are used to interpret an event,” he said. “But it is better with more information so that we can analyze.

“The Khmer Rouge period is an important part of our studies,” he said. “It can be learned from reading and listening to teachers. I have been to interviews, I know a lot about the experiences [of people who lived during that regime], and that is how I can share.” Studying the Khmer Rouge regime is key to understanding modern Cambodia's history, he said. His thesis can also serve as a reference for students who want to do research on that recent chapter of the country’s history. 

The Need for History Students to at Least Read Foreign Languages 

For history students and historians, being able to read in French and English is basically a necessity. Many of Cambodia’s historical documents of the last 160 years or so are in French or English, a reflection of what happened in the country over those decades. 

In 1863, King Norodom had signed a protectorate treaty with France to prevent its neighbors Thailand and Vietnam from gobbling more of its territory. So historical documents from the French Protectorate era are usually in French. Moreover, a large number of documents from King Norodom Sihanouk’s Sangkum regime of the 1950s and 1960s are in French. Many Cambodians spoke French during that era, and Cambodian magazines and newspapers were often published in French. As for English, many documents and historians’ accounts of the 1970s and 1980s—the civil war of the early 1970s, the Khmer Rouge regime, the 1980s’ conflict, the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991 that put an end to war and paved the way to peace in the country—and also of the 1990s are in English. 

As his students often do today, Keany faced challenges during his studies regarding foreign languages. Challenges that were sometimes time-consuming…and costly. “It is difficult because students are [not good] at foreign languages,” said Kung Mary, one of his students. And it’s important to read foreign-language documents in English and French to understand the historical context and the perception of foreign writers, she said. Several of these foreign historians spent long periods of time in Cambodia, if not lived here, and either researched on site or witnessed the events they have written about. 

“That's why every day, I try to make documents or textbooks [available] in Khmer, translate them into Khmer so that students can read them,” Keany said. 

Because beyond making the information more accessible to students by translating it in Khmer, Keany believes that the information on the country’s history should be available in the country’s language. As he explained, “I always ask students: When we talk about the national language and we are not nationalistic about that language, what impact does it have on us? Does it lead to decreasing research in national languages, as students use more foreign languages in researching and in their daily life. 

"I think it's good to know a lot, but it's important to know well your own national language first," Keany said. “So, if history has no subject that focus on nationalism, national identity, national culture, and so on...if we do not [remedy] that, it might be modernized and globalized.” 

The trend of globalization has an impact on the country’s national language, and on how globalization affects our own national identity, Keany said. 

The importance that Keany gives to the country’s language and culture is being felt by his students in class. “Learning history with him makes me want to help preserve our rich culture and traditions,” said Nget Davin, one of Keany’s senior history student from Takeo province. 

He has inspired students to study as well as teach history. “I would like to be a teacher like him,” said Chhum Raksa, one of his senior history students from Prey Veng province. Inspired by Keany, she also wants to conduct research to better understand the country’s history, she said. 

Growing Interest in History among Young Cambodians  

In recent years, Keany has noticed an increase in the number of history students: More young people from the provinces are interested in this field, he said, which was not the case a decade or so ago when few students were interested in pursuing history as a career and field of research.

And Keany has encouraged many of them to continue in this path, said Ke Rachany, a senior student from Ratanakiri province majoring in history. “He gives words of guidance and encouragement to the students,” she said.

Asked what he would respond to a person saying that history is in the past and of no use, Keany said, “the events that happened in the past can be a lesson for people today. History can tell you what is good, what is bad. If you don’t learn from history, sometimes you might repeat something bad, you might become a second Pol Pot. However, if you learn from history, you might avoid something bad and try to repeat something good.” 

If Keany could do it again, would he choose to study and teach history? Yes, he said without hesitation. Nothing is easy in life, but one needs to work hard and continue on his or her path, he said. 

Lyhour Sreang is a researcher and writer with the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam)