How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 1860–1930

The introduction frames the book around the ethical question “How should we behave?” and argues that Cambodian Buddhist modernism was grounded in concerns with purification, authenticity, rationalism, and correct understanding of the Dhamma-vinaya. Hansen situates Khmer Buddhist reform within broader Southeast Asian religious modernisms, including Buddhist and Islamic reform movements, and explains how print culture, new educational methods, vernacular translation, and colonial institutions reshaped Buddhist knowledge in early twentieth-century Cambodia. Chapter 1, “Defending the Jeweled Throne,” studies Khmer religious imagination in the nineteenth century through Buddhist literary understandings of merit, power, moral order, and cosmic kingship. Chapter 2, “Buddhist Responses to Social Change,” examines Buddhist responses to colonial disruption, social instability, millenarianism, and reform. Chapter 3, “Vinaya Illuminations,” analyzes the rise of “modern Dhamma,” new approaches to Pāli learning, Vinaya study, and Buddhist education. Chapter 4, “Colonial Collusions,” discusses the interaction between Khmer Buddhist reformers and French colonial religious policy. Chapter 5, “How Should We Behave?” studies modernist translations of Theravāda Buddhism and the emergence of new Khmer ethical writings focused on everyday moral conduct.