The man and his tales: Étienne Aymonier’s Textes khmers and the colonial construction of the Khmers

ABSTRACT Scholarly studies, so far, have typically regarded Khmer folktales as atemporal and ahistorical. The Khmer society depicted therein was construed as static and unchanged. Khmer folktales have a history, however. Tales that were told have changed over time. This article aims to historicize Khmer folktales by focusing on an examination of Textes khmers, the first printed collection of Khmer folktales and legends published by a colonial administrator, Étienne Aymonier, in Saigon in 1878. The text was published as a language-learning tool for colonial administrators and a medium through which Khmer mores and characteristics were presented. This article argues that Textes khmers was an inefficient language-learning book. The Khmer people were depicted in complex and ambivalent terms, with their characteristics framed in ways that emphasized inferiority. Such editorial interventions, particularly the removal or alteration of obscenity, reflect the moral and ideological imperatives of the mission civilisatrice, through which the French sought to protect the morally French from the taint of the primitives, reinforce notions of cultural superiority of the French, and legitimize colonial authority.