Firstly, I would like to thank Dr Milton Osborne, the series editor, for inviting me to write the Cambodia volume of the Allen & Unwin Short Histories of Asia series. Milton has been an attentive editor, making many thoughtful suggestions and intervening (as a Cambodia specialist himself) to remove some of my more egregious errors. I would also like to thank my wife Professor Dorothy Bruck for her painstaking reading of the manuscript. She brought her acute intelligence to bear on the manuscript, making many helpful suggestions for changes in style and asking, as an intelligent non-specialist, for elaboration of points that I had taken for granted. I should not forget, either, to thank my friend Tony Dewberry for reading the chapter on the Pol Pot regime and discussing its implications. I should also thank my friend and old teacher Professor David Chandler for his encouragement and advice on several occasions, and Catherine Earl for her index. More generally, I must thank the School of Social Sciences at Victoria University for making the time available for me to work on the book. Finally, I would like to thank Rebecca Kaiser, Allen & Unwin’s editorial manager, for her patience in waiting for this work to be completed. Naturally, any errors are my own responsibility.