Angkor Wat: A transcultural history of heritage by Michael Falser

Abstract

Reviewed by: Angkor Wat: A transcultural history of heritage by Michael Falser Christoph Brumann Angkor Wat: A transcultural history of heritage By Michael Falser. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020. Two volumes, almost 1,200 double-column pages, 1,400 illustrations, many in colour, and 4.7 kilograms—is a publication no less monumental than its subject matter, the world-famous Khmer temple in the largest archaeological park on earth. It focuses on the modern history of the site, starting with the rediscovery by French explorers of the gem presumably lost in the jungle (in fact, a place of lively Buddhist practice) from the 1860s on, and emphasizes the "transcultural" trajectory that turned Angkor into one of the most visited global tourist spots and a key playing field for archaeological and heritage diplomacy. In a largely chronological account, Michael Falser identifies a double movement: for one thing, Angkor travelled. Pillaged statues and building parts and large numbers of plaster casts were displayed in museum settings but also inspired reenactments in French universal and colonial exhibitions, culminating in a life-size copy of the central building complex going up in Paris in 1931. Not only did this buttress the eventually successful efforts to bring Siamese territory under the control of the Cambodian protectorate, converting the site into French patrimoine and key assignment of the mission civilisatrice; it also established a sanitised aesthetic standard that—as the second transfer described in the second volume—travelled back: a French-led archaeological apparatus dominated Angkor until well after independence in 1953 and the theme-park patterns of metropolitan display egged on a gradual shift from conservation to reconstruction at the site, often with controversial materials and techniques. The tumultuous two decades of short-lived republic, genocidal Khmer Rouge regime and Vietnamese occupation did not affect Angkor's fabric greatly, and identity politics centering on past Khmer greatness continued across the ideological spectrum, with the exiled but still UN-recognised Khmer Rouge spearheading calls for international protection. Rapid change at Angkor proper came only in the aftermath when a strong sense of emergency motivated an unseen deployment of the conservation teams of all nations and the rapid inscription on the World Heritage List as a site "in danger". Global mass visitation followed in the footsteps and according to Falser's resigned closing remarks, Angkor Park is now being "commodified to death into an archaeological theme park atmosphere" (vol. 2, p. 432). The horror of the modern tourist appears as a somewhat conventional final twist and (neo)colonial dispossession as a foregone conclusion—aren't most visitors from Asia now, not from the erstwhile colonisers; isn't Hun Sen's increasingly authoritarian regime quite adept in harnessing foreign knowhow and resources to one of its biggest cash cows, rather than being lorded over; and what was to be expected in an impoverished country whose educated population had been massacred, I could not help wondering. These quibbles are not to belittle a Herculean accomplishment: Falser has crafted an enormously thorough and detailed history of heritage at Angkor, a whole collection of books in just a single work. Many of the consulted archives and private collections, such as those of the École française d'Extrême-Orient, UNESCO or the Cambodian state, have never been critically examined but reveal a wealth of intricate and often surprising connections between Angkor and the world. We learn about the impact of plaster-cast technology on nineteenth-century French heritage debates; the colony-to-colony transmission of conservation philosophies between Dutch Indonesia and French Indochina, with the Parthenon serving as inspiration; Vann Molyvann's astonishing travels between architectural worlds; the special histories of the Indian, Japanese, or even Polish engagement with Angkor; the malleability of Khmer Rouge ideology concerning the famous site; the current proliferation of replicated Angkors large and small, all the way to a panoramic model sponsored by North Korea; and the many moments of cross-fertilisation between the various Angkor incarnations on Asian and European soil, to mention just some of the countless stops the transcultural journey makes. Falser is not only painstaking with his multilingual source material and skilled in choosing insightful maps, plans, pictures and photos but also...