Lawrence P. Briggs

Lawrence Palmer Briggs (17 Oct 1880, Manton, Wexford County, Michigan, USA — ?) was a US diplomat and independent researcher who dedicated his major work to the Ancient Khmer Empire.

After graduating from University of Michigan in 1908, and teaching in Seattle (Washington State) in 1909-10, Briggs, the first ​“Native Sons” fellow at University of California [from the Orders of the Native Sons & Native Daughters of the Golden West, founded in 1875], was sent to Spain in 1911 – 2 to work in the Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla, in order to complete a thesis on the Spanish colonization of the Pacific coast.

Later, he served as Superintendent of schools and joined the State Department at the outbreak of WWI, serving as U.S. Consul in Saigon (1914−17), Rangoon (1918−20), Rivière du Loup (Quebec, Canada) (1920−22), Nuevitas (Cuba) (1924−29), and Bahia (Brazil) (1932). He seemed to have left the diplomatic service by 1945, as he signed ​“Retired American Consul” a residence card in Los Angeles on that year. His burial location remains unknown.

In the 1940s and 1950s, he published his research extensively, in particular in The Journal of American Oriental Society. Reviewing his major published work (The Ancient Khmer Empire, 1951) in 1953, George Coedès, who had met him in Cambodia, noted that L.P. Briggs had started working on the manuscript in 1943, collating more than 750 research items on the subject. ​“It is the first time that the already considerable body of research work relating to ancient Cambodia has been assembled, sifted and brought within reach to the English’speaking public”, noted Coedès.

He is credited with major breakthroughs in ancient Cambodia history, for instance the hypothesis that the mythical founding couple of Kambuja, Prince Kaundinya and Princess Soma, was inspired by a foundation myth from the Pallava kingdom of India.