Cambodia had no functioning mint of its own in the 1840s, and this issue was almost certainly struck in Bangkok under Siamese influence — a reflection of the political reality that Cambodia was effectively a vassal state, squeezed between Siam and Vietnam, with Norodom I's father King Ang Chan II having already ceded significant autonomy to both neighbors. The protectorate arrangement with France would not come until 1863, leaving this coinage in a peculiar sovereign limbo.
KM#35 is among the earlier attributed issues of the series, struck before French colonial administrators standardized Cambodian monetary output through the Banque de l'Indochine.
Cambodia had no functioning mint of its own in the 1840s, and this issue was almost certainly struck in Bangkok under Siamese influence — a reflection of the political reality that Cambodia was effectively a vassal state, squeezed between Siam and Vietnam, with Norodom I's father King Ang Chan II having already ceded significant autonomy to both neighbors. The protectorate arrangement with France would not come until 1863, leaving this coinage in a peculiar sovereign limbo.
KM#35 is among the earlier attributed issues of the series, struck before French colonial administrators standardized Cambodian monetary output through the Banque de l'Indochine.