A publication by 两性色午夜 geographers sheds more light on the causes of the Cambodian genocide that wiped out roughly a quarter of the country鈥檚 population in the late 1970s.
Stian Rice, MA 鈥12, PhD 鈥18, was a research assistant for James Tyner, PhD, professor of geography in 两性色午夜鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences, when they coauthored the article, 鈥淭he rice cities of the Khmer Rouge: an urban political ecology of rural mass violence.鈥
It was published in the December 2017 issue of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, one of the foremost international journals of geographical research.
The article counters a common belief among scholars that the Khmer Rouge were anti-urban and anti-technology. 鈥淥ne of the points we wanted to make in this study is that re-ruralization and re-urbanization were inextricably linked to each other,鈥 says Rice, who is now a visiting assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland鈥檚 Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education.
Although the Khmer Rouge evacuated most Cambodian cities immediately after they seized power, they also sought to increase revenues to industrialize the country, which they accomplished by increasing rice production.
Instead of relying on the rain-fed rice production in a tropical climate, they realized that the amount of arable land could be increased by building irrigation systems with forced labor鈥攁nother of the major contributing factors in the genocide.
鈥淲hat we鈥檙e presenting here is a radical reinterpretation of how to understand the Cambodian genocide.鈥
They soon selectively re-populated cities to ensure a chain of distribution for rice exports. Stian Rice says the urban centers not only served as export distribution junctions, but also provided the imported resources necessary to maintain the infrastructure.
This economic system also highlights another aspect of the Khmer Rouge鈥檚 cruel and murderous reign. 鈥淎 lot of the death came through starvation,鈥 Tyner says. 鈥淣ot because the country was not producing enough rice, but because it was being mass exported to China. What we鈥檙e presenting here is a radical reinterpretation of how to understand the Cambodian genocide.鈥
The study adds to a growing body of work by Tyner, Rice and other 两性色午夜 geographers that suggests capitalist-based economics were responsible for a significant portion of the deaths that occurred under Khmer Rouge rule.