Between 1936 and 1942—coincidentally the lifespan of Nagara Vatta—Saloth Sar attended a Catholic primary school near the palace, the Ecole Miche. The fees were paid by Meak. Most of his classmates were the children of French bureaucrats or Catholic Vietnamese. One of them, brought up near the palace, remembered Sar as “very charming, like his [adopted] mother.” No anecdotes about him have survived from this period when he became literate in French, grew familiar with Christian doctrine, and received the rudiments of a classical education. During his final years at the school, however, several events occurred that altered the course of Cambodian history and affected Saloth Sar’s career.

The first of these was the Franco-Thai war of 1940-1941, which followed the fall of France to the German army and led to the annexation by the Thai of the northwestern Cambodian provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap. The loss of so much Cambodian territory infuriated King Monivong, who retired to his model farm in Kompong Chhnang. He soon became seriously ill and refused to speak French for the remaining months of his life. Saloth Sar’s younger sister, Saroeun, was at the king’s bedside when he died at the hill resort of Bokor in April 1941, just as the Japanese, eager to expand southward into Southeast Asia were increasing their military pressure on the French in Indochina.

It was in this intimidating atmosphere, isolated from news from home, that the governor general of French Indochina, Admiral Jean Decoux, in choosing Monivong’s successor, bypassed Prince Monireth and plucked the late king’s nineteen-year-old grandson, Norodom Sihanouk, from his lycée studies in Saigon to install him on the Cambodian throne.16

Moving to Kompong Cham

For several years, the young king was a pliable instrument of French colonial policy. The French were anxious to enhance the prestige of traditional rulers in Indochina without increasing the king’s political power. As part of this campaign, they decided to establish a junior high school (collège) in Cambodia’s third largest city, Kompong Cham, and name it after the king. The new school replaced a college in Battambang, which was being administered by the Thai. Battambang was Cambodia’s second largest city and its most prosperous province, but Kompong Cham came close behind. In the 1920s the French had established rubber plantations in the province, and farmers had set up profitable market gardens and silkworm hatcheries along the Mekong. Small industries in the region produced silk, tobacco, lumber, and cotton textiles. With its vigorous economy dominated by the Cham, Vietnamese and Chinese minorities, Kompong Cham was also the most cosmopolitan province in the kingdom.