The French archaeologist and the Siamese algae eater

The Siamese Algae Eater (Gyrinocheilus aymonieri)

When the French linguist, cartographer, archaeologist and globetrotter Etienne François Aymonier died on January 21, 1929, he had lived a rich and full life. As an officer in the naval infantry, he served in the Far East from 1869, especially in Cochinchine, present-day Vietnam. Intrigued by the history and culture of the indigenous people, he began learning Cambodian after meeting the Khmer minority in Tra Vinh province.

Etienne Aymonier

In 1874 he was appointed as a teacher of Cambodian in the College des Administrators Trainees in Saigon where young colonial officials for the French administrative apparatus in Indochine were trained. In 1876 he was appointed French representative in the protectorate of Cambodia and was consequently the highest French official in the region. He had already published two Khmer-French dictionaries and continued his exploration of Angkor from the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. lieutenant de vaisseau Delaporte (1842-1926) and doctor Jules Harmand (1845-1921) started in 1873. Harmand would later develop a diplomatic career and was French consul-general in Bangkok from 1881 to 1883.

Delaporte, who had already made his mark on the 1866 expedition to map the Mekong, had been commissioned by the French government to compile the first official collection of Khmer art in France. In fact, this amounted to an officialized art theft in which a number of monumental statues and archaeological artifacts, purchased at a bargain price, were taken aboard the French gunboat Javelins were hoisted… It was the beginning of the wonderful collection that forms the basis of the Musée National des Arts asiatiques-Guimet in Paris. Today one of the most important collections and knowledge centers of Southeast Asian art in the world. A museum to which Aymonier would literally and figuratively contribute in the course of the following years.

Louis Delaporte

Etienne Aymonier decided to take a more academic approach to mapping Angkor. In 1881 he was charged with the task of leading an archaeological and geographical expedition into previously unexplored areas of Cambodia. In the eighties of the nineteenth century, however, he not only extensively explored Cambodia, but also Laos and Siam. This urge to explore areas where one had often never seen a white person sometimes led to real expeditions that he, accompanied by a number of Cambodians trained by him, set up to explore not only the geography but also the political situation, agriculture and forestry and map ethnic diversity. Coincidence or not, but all things that could be interesting from a colonializing point of view. During that period he regularly collaborated with that other great French explorer Auguste Jean-Marie Pavie (1847-1925), who, as a French chargé d'affaires in Bangkok in 1893, played a key role in the French gunboat diplomacy. As a result, Laos disappeared from the Siamese sphere of influence and Pavie became the first French governor-general of Laos.

Aymonier was appointed as director of the scientific committee of the French alliance and the Society Asiatic a pioneer in the protection of Asian cultural heritage. For example, he played a very important role in the creation of the prestigious Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. This academic institution was charged with the conservation of Angkor Wat from 1908. Apart from his linguistic work, after his retirement between 1900 and 1904 he published a number of books with the Parisian publisher E. Leroux, which are still regarded as standard works to this day: 'Le Cambodge: Le groupe d'Angkor et l'histoire', 'Le Cambodge: Le royalaime actuel'  in "Le Cambodge: Les provinces siamoises'.

Dr. harmand

Etienne Aymonier has made an extremely important contribution to a better understanding of the history, culture and identity of the peoples of Southeast Asia, especially the Khmer and Cham. His name lives on in those named after him Gyrinocheilus aymonieri, a freshwater fish found in the basins of the Chao Phraya and Mekong and included in the name list of the Food and Agriculture Organization from being cataloged as the Siamese Algae Eater. This fish is an indispensable ingredient of the Thai 'Stinky fish'pasta or the Cambodian prahok...