Angkor had been a part of the Khmer past. Khmer folktales and the Cambodian royal chronicles had mentioned the monuments, yet Cambodia had to learn the history of Angkor from the French historians. In the 1930s, the Khmer intellectuals obtained opportunities to talk about Angkorean dance through the publishing media. Along with the translation of the Thai texts, an integration of French discourse on Angkor and the existing Khmer narratives was attempted.
Due to the fact that colonial discourse on Angkor was incorporated into Cambodian nationalism, the court dance which had been connected with Angkor was utilized to serve the nation-state. Moreover, the French “academic” writings reinforced nationalistic discourse on the “tradition.”
“Tradition” was invented by the colonizers, for the purpose of differentiating themselves from the colonized, and it was imitated by the latter. A social fluctuation caused the invention of “tradition”. Discourse which regarded the Cambodian court dance as the Angkorean “tradition” was also invented under such a fluctuation of colonial encounters.
Reference: Sasagawa Hideo, 2005.
