Why go
Read this before visiting Angkor Wat or walking the older parts of town. The account connects the decline of Angkor, long periods of Siamese influence and the return of the province to Cambodia under French colonial rule. It also separates a popular explanation of the city's name from its uncertain origin.
The full story
Siem Reap is often translated as 'Defeat of Siam.' A story links the name to a sixteenth-century victory by the Cambodian king Ang Chan, but the origin of the name remains uncertain. The story is best understood as one part of a much longer history of conflict and exchange between Khmer and Siamese rulers. Angkor's decline began well before the era of modern tourism. An Ayutthaya campaign captured the city in 1431, yet no single event fully explains why its political centre shifted. Changes to the environment and infrastructure may also have played a part. In later centuries, rulers in Cambodia faced pressure from both Siam and Vietnam. Siem Reap and neighbouring northwestern provinces came under Siamese administration in the late eighteenth century. The area passed to French Indochina in 1907. These changes help put the ruins and the modern town in different frames. Angkor Wat belongs to the height of the Khmer Empire; the streets of Siem Reap reflect the much later settlement that grew beside its remains.