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Books Arts • Colonialism

Picture Postcards of Cambodia, 1900-1950

by Joel Montague

A compendium reflecting the some 10, 000 postcards issued across French Indochina in the first half of the 20th century, particularly those about Cambodia.

 
Formats
ADB Physical Library, paperback
Publisher
Bangkok, White Lotus Press.
Published
2010
Author
Joel Montague
Pages
337
ISBN
9789744801197
Language
English

Table of contents

  • 1
    CHAPTER 1: FRENCH INDOCHINA: THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT - An Introduction to the History of the Protectorate of Cambodia within Indochina Colonial Cambodia: The Question of "non-History" - The Picture Postcard: An Ephemeral Record of Early Twentieth Century Cambodia Colonial Administration in the Five States of the French Indochinese Union - A New World: Picture Postcard Maps of Indochina - Pictture Postcards 1
  • 2
    CHAPTER 2: PICTURE POSTCARDS OF CAMBODIA: 1900 TO MID-CENTURY - The History of the Picture Postcard - Categorization of Postcards of Cambodia - The Messages on Picture Postcards with Images of Cambodia Sent from Indochina: Photographers, Editors, Printers and the Dating of Postcards - Identification of Some Key Elements of Picture Postcards Used to Illustrate this Book - The Postal Service for Indochina - Picture Postcards 27
  • 3
    CHAPTER 3: THE MONARCHY - Images of the Cambodian Royal Family - Picture Postcards 53
  • 4
    CHAPTER 4: THE PALACE, THOSE SERVING THE MONARCHY, AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS  - The Royal Palace in Phnom Penh - The Palace Staff and Those Serving the Government - Picture Postcards 71
  • 5
    CHAPTER 5: CAMBODIA'S CAPITAL, THE GREAT CITY OF PHNOM PENH - French Colonial Structures - The Phnom and its Surroundings - Picture Postcards 87
  • 6
    CHAPTER 6: CAMBODIA'S LIFELINE - THE MEKONG RIVER - The Port and Canal of Phnom Penh - The Great River and the Boats on it - Picture Postcards 121
  • 7
    CHAPTER 7: THE KHMER AND OTHER INHABITANTS OF CAMBODIA - The Khmer - Other Inhabitants - Picture Postcards 133
  • 8
    CHAPTER 8: KHMER DANCE AND MUSIC - Dance - Music - Picture Poscards 161
  • 9
    CHAPTER 9: INSTITUTIONS OF PARTICULAR INTEREST - Indigenous and French Troops - The Prison System - Educational Institutions - Foreign and Local Hunters - Picture Postcards 175
  • 10
    CHAPTER 10: THE RELIGIONS OF CAMBODIA - Buddhism - Catholicism - Islam (the Cham-Malay) - Picture Postcards 191
  • 11
    CHAPTER 11: SCENES FROM PROVINCIAL AND RURAL CAMBODIA - Major Towns - Villages and Dwellings - Picture Postcards 203
  • 12
    CHAPTER 12: THE CAMBODIAN ECONOMY - Animal Husbandry and Agriculture - Fisheries and Forestry - Commerce and Handicrafts - Picture Postcards
  • 13
    CHAPTER 13: IMPORTANT EVENTS AND RITES OF PASSAGE - Festivals and Ceremonies - The Water Festival - Picture Postcards 243
  • 14
    CHAPTER 14: ARCHAEOLOGICAL WONDERS OF CAMBODIA - Angkor Wat and its Neighbors - Nokor (Kampong Cham) - Picture Postcards 257
  • 15
    CHAPTER 15: .CAMBODIA AND THE KHMER ABROAD - International Expositions and Fairs Featuring Indochina and Cambodia - A Tiny Glimpse of the Khmer Presence in Neighboring Countries - Picture Postcards 275
  • 16
    CHAPTER 16: COLOR PICTURE POSTCARDS 289
  • FINIS 307
  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 311
  • ENDNOTES 313
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY 321
  • LIST OF POSTCARD EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS 327

Tags: postcards, photography, commercial photography, French Indochina, French Protectorate, 1890s, 1880s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, French administrators, colonial administration

About the Author

Joel Montague

Joel Montague

Joel G. Montague (b. 1936 — New York, USA ) is a retired public health officer who has worked in some 20 countries worldwide, including Cambodia where he wasa active from 1991 until 1996 and developed a keen interest in Cambodian modern history.

He started his international travels when he went to Iran in 1960 on a Fulbright Fellowship to study Farsi and tribal relations in Baluchistan. He joined CARE organization, working on public health programs in Iran, Egypt and Tunisia. He was also on numerous assignments with The World Bank, UNFPA, WHO, and local nonprofit organizations. In Cambodia, he represented the John Snow Research and Training in Phnom Penh, running a malaria-control program for Partners for Development (PFD), an organization dedicated to improving quality of life for those in developing countries. During his free time, he roamed the country on a motorbike, collecting hand-painted shop signs and postcards, pushing as far as the border with Thailand to visit the place where Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot had died.

With his Iranian-born wife, Shahnaz, a physician, and their two children, Montague has lived in London before settling back in Massachusetts, USA. A Trustee of the US Committee for Refugees, Immigration and Refugee Services of America and the National Council for International Health, an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Humanities of the University of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, he has been distinguished with several honors for his dedication to public health. 

His independent research on the history of modern Cambodia had brought him to revisit texts by French explorers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 2012, Joel Montague donated numerous pieces of his personal collection of Cambodian shop signs from the 1990s to the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, California. 

Selected Publications

  • [ed. and tr. with William G. Vann] The Colonial Good Life: A Commentary on André Joyeux’s Vision of French Indochina, Bangkok, White Lotus Press. 2008, 120 p. ISBN 9789744801425.
  • [editor, author of texts] Picture Postcards of Cambodia 1900 – 1950, Bangkok, White Lotus Press, 2010, 337 p.
  • [with Kent Davis [ed.] & Daria Lacy [designer]] Cambodian Shop Signs, DatASIA, 2013, 60 p. ISBN‎ 978 – 1934431931.
  • [with Jim Mizerski] John Thomson: The Early Years — In Search of the Orient, Bangkok, White Lotus Press, 2014. ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978 – 9748434940.
  • [ed. with Jim Mizerski; Marie-Hélène Arnauld [tr.]] Cambodia Past: Explaining the Present, DatASIA, 2016. ISBN13 978 – 19344316272016. [from Etienne Aymonier’s Notes sur le Cambodge (1875), illustrated with photographs by Emile Gsell]. 
  • [ed.; Marie-Hélène Arnauld [tr.]] Notes and Memories of Cambodia by Bernard Marrot, DatASIA, 2019, 114 p. ISBN13 9781934431238.
  • [ed. with Jim Mizerski; Marie-Hélène Arnauld [tr.]] Vorvong and Saurivong: A Cambodian Tale, DatASIA, 2021 [from Auguste Pavie​’s 1897 text].