|
Thailand The Khmer
Two groups of Khmer could also be distinguished--long-time
inhabitants of Thailand and more recent arrivals. By the midfifteenth century, much of the western region of the Khmer Empire
had come under the control of Ayutthaya. Many of the Khmer
peoples remained in the area that had come under Thai domination.
Five centuries later the protracted civil conflict in Cambodia,
which began with the overthrow of the Lon Nol regime in 1975 and
included the Vietnam-supported overthrow of the Pol Pot regime in
1979, led to the arrival at the Thai-Cambodian border of
additional hundreds of thousands of Khmer. Some Khmer had crossed
over into Thailand; many others might be expected to do so if
several political obstacles were overcome
(see The Indochinese Refugee Question
, this ch.;
Potential External Threats
, ch. 5).
Theravada Buddhists and wet-rice cultivators, the Khmer spoke
a language of the Mon-Khmer group and were heirs to a long and
complex political and cultural tradition. If long-term resident
Khmer and Khmer refugees were both included, there were perhaps
as many as 600,000 to 800,000 Khmer living in Thailand in the
1980s. Many of the long-resident Khmer were said to speak Thai,
sometimes as a first language, and religious and other
similarities contributed over time to Thai-Khmer intermarriage
and to Khmer assimilation into Thai society. Newly arrived Khmer,
however, were not yet assimilated.
Data as of September 1987
|
