ABSTRACT
Between April 1975 and January 1979, the Communist Party of Kampuchea carried out a program of mass violence that resulted in the death of approximately two million people. Senior leaders of the CPK initiated a transformation of Khmer society in an effort to accumulate capital rapidly in order to develop a modern industry. In so doing, the Khmer Rouge embarked on a massive infrastructure project to manage effectively and efficiently the country’s water resources. After the downfall of the Khmer Rouge, remnants of these hydro-engineering projects remain as the post-industrial landscape of a rural economy. Recent years have witnessed an efflorescence of writings on post-industrial landscapes; a key element of this work is the transitory element of landscapes, that is, the transformation of spaces once economically productive and environmentally destructive into something else. Here, we document the post-industrial transformation of an agrarian landscape. We argue that the dams, dikes, canals, and reservoirs constructed under the Khmer Rouge continue to serve both material and memory work in present-day Cambodia. We conclude that the industrial legacy of the Khmer Rouge’s attempt to modernize agriculture provides a crucial addition to the study of post-industrial place, memory, and heritage.
