Cambodia in the Mid-19th Century: A Heroic Struggle for Survival (1840–1863)

At the heart of the dusty archives of Portuguese exploration in Asia emerges the gripping story of António da Madalena, a Portuguese Franciscan monk who, in the 16th century, became the first European to set foot on the mythical site of Angkor.

António da Madalena: the first European at Angkor

This fascinating document, published in 2009 by PlanetaClix as a collective biographical notice in English and Portuguese, recounts his extraordinary journey through the testimony he entrusted to the historian Diogo do Couto. Available on the Angkor Database website, this six-page publication rekindles the flame of a major discovery, long buried beneath Cambodia’s tropical vegetation and erased from European memory. At a time when Southeast Asia was opening to Portuguese colonial ambitions, Madalena embodied the spirit of a humble explorer, guided by faith rather than by gold.

Portrait of a mysterious monk-explorer

Very little is known about the origins of António da Madalena—or Magdalena, as some records spell his name: neither his place of birth nor the exact date has reached us, time having erased these intimate details. A Franciscan lay brother, he enters history in October 1584, when he lands in Malacca, the Portuguese stronghold conquered in 1511 and a bustling commercial hub linking India, China and the kingdoms of Southeast Asia. There, a thriving Franciscan monastery served as a base for evangelizing missions, sending brothers to hostile lands such as Cambodia, the weakened successor of the once-glorious Khmer Empire.

A few months after his arrival, Madalena joined a mission to the Cambodian kingdom, probably in 1585 or 1586, passing through Ayutthaya—then the Siamese capital—before venturing deep into Cambodia’s dense forests. Accompanying a royal entourage, perhaps that of King Barom Reachea II or a Khmer dignitary, he braved marshlands, Siamese incursions and the fierce hostility of local Buddhist monks, who looked with suspicion on these Christian intruders. His journey culminated at Angkor, the legendary city rediscovered around 1550–1551 by King Stha during a hunt, partially restored during his reign (1571–1576) and then abandoned once more. In doing so, Madalena entered legend: the first European to describe this submerged wonder, he left a testimony of rare vividness, capturing the essence of a vanished civilization.

A dazzling description of Angkor the Magnificent

Madalena’s account, as transcribed by Diogo do Couto, portrays Angkor as a city of unparalleled splendor: “the finest, best-served and cleanest of all the cities in the world.” He marvels at the ingenious Khmer hydraulic systems—canals, dikes and colossal reservoirs such as the West Baray, 8 km long, 2 km wide and 12 m deep, capable of storing more than 200 million cubic meters of monsoon water to irrigate rice fields. Angkor Thom, with its grid-like urban plan and unfinished royal palaces adorned with alabaster columns, friezes and exquisite sculptures, overwhelms him; as for Angkor Wat, built by Suryavarman II in the early 12th century, he perceptively senses its Hindu origins before its Buddhist conversion, noting the graceful apsaras and bas-reliefs typical of Hindu temples.

Every line conveys wonder: “On one side of this city, unfinished buildings appear to have been the palaces of kings, by their workmanship, magnificence and royal grandeur, with their many alabaster columns, foliage, figures and other beauties that delighted the eye and bore witness to the skill of their sculptors.” Madalena stayed long enough to grasp the site’s precise topography—north of the Tonlé Sap, south of the Kulen Mountains—and the agricultural ingenuity that sustained a millennial empire.

Diogo do Couto, the discreet guardian of the testimony

It is to Diogo do Couto (1542–1616), official chronicler and guarda-mor of Portuguese archives in Asia, that we owe the preservation of this treasure. The initiator of the sixth volume of the Décadas da Ásia, begun by João de Barros, Couto recorded Madalena’s account without incorporating it, perhaps out of caution or lack of space. After his death, his personal papers passed to his brother-in-law, the priest Deodato da Trindade, husband of Luisa de Melo; they lay dormant until 1947, when British historian Charles R. Boxer unearthed them, revealing this forgotten chapter to the world.

Couto himself never set foot in Cambodia, yet his faithful pen conveys the monk’s raw emotion. Madalena’s tragic fate completes his aura: in 1589, as he was returning to Portugal after years in India, Malacca and Ayutthaya, his ship, the São Tomé, sank in a storm off Natal (South Africa). Ironically, King Barom Reachea II honored him posthumously through three letters to the governor of Malacca: the first expressing a desire for ties with the Franciscans; the second promising power, freedom and authority to the priests; the third thanking them for gifts and pledging to satisfy all the brother’s requests.

Angkor in the Indo-Chinese context of the 16th century

To fully grasp Madalena’s achievement, one must return to 16th-century Indochina: after the fall of Angkor in 1431 under Siamese assaults—a six-month siege capping decades of bloody warfare—the Khmer kingdom shifted toward Lovek or Ayutthaya, fleeing Vietnamese and Siamese raids. The memory of Angkor faded, its temples swallowed by the jungle, for lack of written testimony—a historiographical void that persists today. The Portuguese, following the conquest of Malacca and the establishment of feitorias in Pegu (Burma), heard of the “interior kingdom of Cambodia”; merchants and adventurers ventured there, followed by Franciscan missions from Malacca.

But evangelization failed in the face of Buddhist opposition. A touching episode, reported by the Franciscan Jacinto de Deus, shows Madalena begging in the streets, inspiring such pious compassion in a local mandarin that it unsettled Christians themselves. After him, other Europeans—Portuguese and Spanish—visited Angkor, but their accounts, deemed inferior by Bernard-Philippe Groslier, added nothing new. The Dutch capture of Malacca in 1641 finally buried the city in Europe’s consciousness, until its French rediscovery by Charles-Émile Bouillevaux in 1850.

The importance of the PlanetaClix document and its historiographical legacy

This PlanetaClix booklet, enriched with maps (16th-century Indochina, the location of Angkor), photographs (Angkor Wat, apsaras) and a bibliography (Manuel Teixeira on the missions in Malacca, Groslier on Angkor in the 16th century, National Geographic), is more than a simple notice: it is a bridge to a vibrant past. It sheds light on Portugal–Cambodia exchanges, Khmer engineering and Europe’s pre-colonial fascination with Asia.

Rediscovered via the Angkor Database, it invites reflection on those anonymous pioneers whose footsteps through the jungle foreshadowed the era of modern explorers.

Today, as Angkor draws millions of visitors, Madalena’s testimony reminds us that behind the moss-covered stones lies a human story: that of a humble monk whose amazed eyes captured the soul of an eternal city. This modest yet precious document deserves a place in any library devoted to Khmer and Portuguese history.