We note with sadness the passing of Michael Vickery, a historian whose work challenged established assumptions about the history and historiography of Cambodia and the Cambodian people, and who made significant contributions to knowledge about the origins and development of Angkor. Michael served on the editorial board of Critical Asian Studies from 1993 until 1996, and on the CAS advisory board from 1996 until his death on June 29 in Battambang, Cambodia. He was eighty-six.
Michael was born in Billings, Montana, grew up in Maine, and graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Washington in 1952. His commitment to Asia began in 1960, when he moved to Southeast Asia to teach English, first in Cambodia and later Laos. In 1967, he returned to the United States and entered the Ph.D. program in Southeast Asian Studies at Yale University, where he eventually earned his doctorate in 1977. A talented linguist, Michael spoke Khmer, Lao, Thai, and Bahasa Melayu, among other languages. He was the author of Cambodia 1975–1982 (1984); Kampuchea, Politics, Economics and Society (1986); Society, Economics and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th–8th Centuries (1998); and Cambodia: A Political Survey (2007) as well as more than twenty chapters in other books, and numerous scholarly and journalistic articles.
Michael held research positions in Southeast Asian studies at the Australian National University and the University of Adelaide, and served on the faculty of the Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, and the Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh. He spent much of his life in Southeast Asia, where his presence shall be deeply missed.