The Yale scholar, who likens his work as a historian to that of a detective, recently travelled to the south of France to research his forthcoming book on the history of Cambodia from the Ice Age to the present. There he uncovered rare 19th-century Cambodian-language texts while working in the French colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence. Found in a police file, the documents are captured anti-French rebel communications from the mid-1880s. “Their significance,” says Kiernan, “lies mainly in the fact that so few 19th-century Cambodian-language texts survive.”

For the whole of the 19th century, apart from several well-known chronicles and long poems, only about 30 documents in Cambodian survive, explains Kiernan. Each of them is handwritten; there was no printing during that time in Cambodia. “So far I’ve found about 10 in archives in Paris and 15 in Aix en Provence. Altogether about 25 documents for the whole of the 19th century in the Cambodian language,” says Kiernan. Many others held in Cambodian libraries were destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime.

Some of the documents that Kiernan uncovered are dated 1883-1884, the Buddhist year 2426 or, the year of the Rooster “26,” explains Kiernan. They were written on palm leaf or rice paper, following a Convention held in 1884 when the French had forced Cambodia’s reigning king to give up some of his power. The documents foretold of a rebellion that was being planned against the French Protectorate over Cambodia. Of this discovery, says Kiernan, one of the things that intrigued him most is that the rebellion that took place in 1885 and 1886 was organized in the shadows, undercover, behind the scenes, and not only by the king. “I think that this means there was a lot more grass roots organizing that took place during the 19th century in Cambodia,” says the Yale scholar.