Book Review: The Khmer Lands of Vietnam: Environment, Cosmology and Sovereignty by Philip Taylor

Kampuchea Krom has served for centuries as a much-contested middle-space that occupies the rich Mekong Delta area of southern Vietnam. The Khmer Krom people, who comprise a large demographic in the region, are an Pacific Affairs: Volume 89, No. 1 - March 2016 222 ethnic Khmer minority who have called this area home for centuries. Due in large part to centuries of regional rivalry, Kampuchea Krom, which is under Vietnamese territorial domain, has taken on a legendary character. Most famously, a Cambodian story told of an early seventeenth-century betrayal of Khmers by Vietnamese, one which the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) under Pol Pot revived to foment hatred among his people toward the country's ethnic minority Vietnamese population.