During the opening of the Santepheap Foodcourt, we had the opportunity to visit the Phnom Penh Customs Museum, located in the former building of the General Department of Customs and Excise. Although this project is still recent and continues to evolve, the site offers an informative tour of the customs history of the Kingdom — featuring historical documents, books, photographs, models, uniforms, and investigative methods.

At the heart of the colonial upheavals of the 20th century, Marius Moutet emerged as a pivotal figure—a committed socialist and pragmatic reformer. Minister of the Colonies under the Popular Front (1936–1938), then Minister of Overseas France (1946–1947, 1950–1951), he sought to reconcile humanist ideals with imperial realities in Indochina.

In the jungles and rice fields of Southeast Asia, the Second World War was far more than a distant echo of battles in Europe or the Pacific. Between 1940 and 1945, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were swept into a geopolitical maelstrom in which opportunistic alliances, brutal occupations, and fragile resistance movements redrew borders and national destinies.

Alexandre Yersin belongs to the rare group of Frenchmen whose memory is still honoured in today’s Vietnam. Discoverer of the plague bacillus, explorer, originator of the future mountain resort at Lang Bian (the city of Dalat), promoter of quinine and rubber plantations… Alexandre Yersin lived a full life — and saved thousands of others.

At the dawn of the 20th century, as the great colonial currents were redrawing new horizons, a Breton painter with a keen eye and a seafaring soul ventured to the mysterious heart of Cambodia. Maurice Menardeau, naval officer and official artist, was not content to simply travel through these distant lands: he scrutinized them, felt them, and transposed them with rare sensitivity.

In the XIXᵉ century, when Europe was still vibrating to the rhythm of the great explorations and dreams of the Orient, one name resonated in scholarly and adventurous circles: that of Xavier Brau de Saint-Pol Lias.

In French colonial history, some names resonate more loudly than others: Jules Ferry, Albert Sarraut and Lyautey. But one of the most striking figures, although less mentioned today, remains Paul Doumer. Governor General of Indochina from 1897 to 1902, and future President of the French Republic, he was above all a rigorous, pragmatic and authoritarian administrator, whose actions had a profound impact on Vietnam, Laos and above all Cambodia.

At the heart of the 19th century, as the European powers sought to extend their influence in Asia, an exemplary figure stood out for his courage, his erudition and his decisive role in colonial and scientific history: Ernest Marie Louis de Gonzague Doudart de Lagrée.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, amid the turmoil of colonial conquests and the exploration of distant lands, a remarkable figure emerged, who was in turn a soldier, linguist, explorer and scholar: Étienne François Aymonier (1844-1929). A man of many talents, he was the first scientist to methodically survey the ruins and decipher the inscriptions of the ancient Khmer kingdom—now Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and southern Vietnam—and to study the little-known Cham civil

Born in 1859 in the hamlet of Arbarella, on the rugged and proud island of Corsica, Jules Agostini grew up in fin-de-siècle France, with a vivid imagination for distant lands and the strangeness of other places.