About Franco-Cambodian Treaty of November
8th, 1949
Signed in Paris between the High
representatives of France and Cambodia this important act has consecrated the
independence of Cambodia and its adhesion to the French Union as a State
associated to France, each of the contracting parties accepting there from, the
obligations prescribed, to the title of French Union, by the Constitution of
the IVth Republic.
The Royal Government of Cambodia is qualified
ever since then to practice in their fullness the attributions and prerogatives
that proceed from interior Sovereignty.
Cambodia accepts the monetary and customs
union with the other associated States of Indochina. It acknowledges to France
certain particular rights or certain facilities in matters of public or private
education, grants to the subjects of the French Union, the benefit of the
national form of government regarding their properties, rights, interests and
undertakings, its natives receiving by reciprocity the benefit of a same
treatment in the territories of the French Union.
Cambodia has thorough and entire jurisdiction
for all the civil, commercial and penal instances, in the whole territory of
its Kingdom, under reserve of stipulations or agreements concerning the working
and the competency of mixed jurisdiction in regard to instances arising about
people of the French Union; other than Cambodians and certain foreigners profiting
by a jurisdictional privilege.
It is qualified to have its own National
Army, receiving the help of the Forces of the French Union for the defense of
its own frontiers, and cooperating with the latter in the defense of the
frontiers of the French Union against all exterior enemies.
In diplomatic matters, the Royal Government
will elect delegates to the High Council of the French Union. It can be
represented abroad by diplomatic authorities, and negotiate and decide upon
international agreements concerning its particular interests, under reserve of
acting in connection or on agreement with the Government of the French
Republic, under conditions plainly determined.
A Protocol and different annex Stipulations,
signed at the same time as the treaty provide for a few precisions in
diplomatic matter, and about the employment, by each contracting State, of
subjects of the other State, as well as about judicial, cultural, military,
economic and financial questions.
Lastly, several particular agreements of the
purpose of facilitating the application of this Treaty and of its annexes, and
to permit the realization, at the shortest notice, of the transfers only
interested France and Cambodia, or shall shortly be elaborated during one of
the inter-States Conferences, in order to transfer, or to uphold, if needed,
under reserve of modification, the powers previously practiced by the High
Commissioner's Office of France in Indochina, of mixed organization being
prescribed to study, coordinate, or to make regulations for Offices of
Common-interest, more particular, transmission Office, Immigration Control,
Exterior Trade and Customs, Treasury and the Plan of Equipment.
Approved by the French Constitutional
Requests, the Franco-Cambodian Treaty and its annexes are from now on applied
and will be in full vigor in a very short time.
They insure to Cambodia the complete practice
of its interior Sovereignty, and only limit its exterior sovereignty in the
measure of the dispositions true to the spirit of the French Union, or agreements
concluded - or to be settled soon - with France and the other associated States
of Indochina, according to the constant common interests in all these
States. Cambodia must therefore be
estimated as really having henceforth the effective status of an independent
State, since inconsiderable limits to its sovereignty exist only in quality of
international acts settled by it.
Source: Modern
Cambodia, Edited by the Press Office of the Royal Palace.
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