Armies and enemies of the Khmer Empire Volume 1 - review

Back in 2017 Mrs T and I visited Laos and Cambodia. I wrote about it at the time and did a post with photos I'd taken of the magnificent carvings on the walls of the Angkor city complex. This caught the eye of fellow wargamer Mark Fry, who I meet occasionally at various Society of Ancients events. We exchanged emails and I shared my photos with him. He subsequently asked to use some in this book and its companion volume. I agreed, and the reward was to get a copy of both books gratis. I also said I'd review the books. I've now read volume one

I don't profess to be an expert on the subject. Whilst I was in Cambodia I picked up the book below, because a shop next door to our hotel had a copy. Turns out up until now it was the standard reference work for people like me.

Back in the hotel using the wi-fi I was able to check for wargame figures and a new project was under way almost as soon as I got home (half way round the world. It's mad, isn't it?) I eventually produced three armies for DBA: Khmer, Burmese and Thai, all using the now unavailable Irregular 15mm. So that's about the depth of my knowledge.

With that as background, this is what I think.

This is a labour of love for Mark, if not an obsession. In assembling the work he has made use of not just my photos but also an extensive collection of his own. This is the strength and the weakness of this book and any others on the subject. The main primary source for the military aspects of the Khmer Empire are these carvings. We do not have a Khmer written military treatise, and we don't seem to have much written or carved by their opponents. But what a primary source we have. The detail is incredible, and stretches across mythological scenes to those of armies on the march, in training and in battle. From these we can also identify their opponents and what they looked like too. It's like Trajan's column or even the Bayeux Tapestry. It's all pictures and no text. This leaves us with questions about what equipment was made of, what were the exact sizes of armies and what were the troop proportions and so on. Can we really deduce the tactics and deployments from a flat illustration?

Mark has examined the carvings in minute detail, and he has also read extensively across published works on the subject from full blown monographs and specialist journal articles. This is a really impressive effort, and is as thorough a piece of work as you could hope to encounter.

Unlike the academic historians that he has studied and quoted from, Mark has done what the wargamer needs. He has tried to interpret what we know in the context of what we need to know. Yes, there are horse - but what are cavalry used for? Those designs on the shield - do they tell us anything about how they were made? What can we deduce about how elephants were crewed and how people fought from them? Did they really shoot those ballistas from the back of elephants? In all of these things and more Mark shows his working and makes it clear when he is guessing. This is really important if you're using this book as a wargamer or a modeller. You can go with his reasoning with a high degree of confidence, and you can follow the references, but it is clear when he is filling in the gaps.

The book comes with some excellent modern artwork, which seems almost to be superfluous given that each page is festooned with photographs of carvings. Their main purpose to me is to make visual Mark's conclusions about what colours the various troops wore. I can see from my email traffic with Mark back in 2017 (!) that we shared the view that the armies would have been colourful and these pictures will be inspirational for any one wanting to get into this period and theatre. However, given the demise of both Irregular and Outpost Wargames I don't know where you'd get your figures from.

The book is a Helion, so there will be production quality issues. Mark seems to have lucked out by getting Stephen Ede-Borrett, doyen of the Pike & Shot society, to act as his editor. There were very few typos and only a small number of cross referencing issues with wrong image numbers given. I'd have liked an index, but Helion pretty much don't do them. Too expensive to pay someone to do them, I expect. 

CONCLUSION: This is a magnificent volume, with a hard "BUY" recommendation from me if you have any interest in the period. I just hope it hasn't come too late, given the current culling of 15mm figure manufacturers.