CAMBODIA 1 riel 1970

Description

The is no indication that these coins circulated.

The Khmer Republic was declared after a military coup in 1970, while the King, Sihanouk, was on a state visit to China. The USA immediately recognized the coup government, but the king resisted and there was civil war. The North Vietnamese set up shop in large parts of the country, leading to the “secret bombing campaign” of American President Nixon. The Communists continued to grow in power, even after the Vietnamese left. In 1975 they captured the country and intiated what became known as the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Southeast Asia had a human population in lower Paleolithic times. People started building in stone in the early centuries AD. A Hindu Khmer Empire controlled nearby territories, engaged in maritime trade, and built Angkor Wat. Cambodian succession states contented with their neighbors the Lao, Mon, later the Thai, Vietnamese, etc. until the French colonizers arrived. After the French left the Americans tried to manage the local politics but failed in that attempt.

The big player in East Asia is China, of course. Then there is Japan and Korea, throw in Mongolia. South of China and east of India, but not including, for the most part, the islands to the east, is what we call Southeast Asia. From Burma to Malaya there have been a series of local kingdoms for about 2000 years. Russia, with its Asian Siberia, doesn’t count. We consider it part of Europe.

By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.