Guérin, Mathieu <br/><br/>
Peasants and Bandits in the Rice Paddies 

 -  2017.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 94 
<br/><br/> In the Cambodian rural areas, as in much of Southeast Asia, the 1930s Great Depression led to a fall in the price of commodities, a shortage of currency, a slowdown of trade and a rise of the fiscal burden on the peasantry. Acquisitive violence and homicides soared. A serial approach of the reports written by the governors of the province of Kampong Thom during the 1930s show that most of the perpetuators were farmers who engaged in armed robberies as a side occupation. Bandits could target everyone, including poor villagers. However, local elites, village and commune leaders, Chinese merchants, were prime targets. This can be explained by their wealth, but also by the pressure experienced by farmers from the State and moneylenders. These crimes did not constitute an uprising, but the resort to violence was legitimized by the oppression of the peasantry. In the following decades, this was used by the Khmer rouge guerrilla.