James' World 2

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Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is 181,035 square kilometers (69,898 square miles) in area, bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, Vietnam to the east, the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest, and maritime borders with Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Phnom Penh is the nation’s capital and largest city.

The sovereign state of Cambodia has a population of over 15 million. Buddhism is enshrined in the constitution as the official state religion and is practiced by more than 97% of the population. Cambodia’s minority groups include Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams, and 30 hill tribes. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh, the political, economic, and cultural center of Cambodia. The kingdom is an elective constitutional monarchy with a monarch, currently Norodom Sihamoni, chosen by the Royal Council of the Throne as head of state. The head of government is the Prime Minister, currently Hun Sen, the longest-serving non-royal leader in Southeast Asia, who has ruled since 1985.

The region now known as Cambodia has been inhabited since prehistoric times. In 802 AD, Jayavarman II declared himself king, uniting the warring Khmer princes of Chenla under the name “Kambuja”. This marked the beginning of the Khmer Empire, which flourished for over 600 years. The Indianised kingdom facilitated the spread of first Hinduism and then Buddhism to much of Southeast Asia and undertook many religious infrastructural projects throughout the region. Angkor Wat is the most famous of these structures and is designated as a World Heritage Site. In the fifteenth century, Cambodia experienced a decline of power, while its neighbors Vietnam and Thailand grew stronger. In 1863, Cambodia became a protectorate of France and later was incorporated into French Indochina. The country was under Japanese occupation during the Second World War before French control was restored.

Cambodia gained independence from France in 1953 and was led by King-turned politician Norodom Sihanouk. Despite Cambodia’s neutrality in the Vietnam War, the war extended into the country in 1965 with North Vietnam’s expansion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the establishment of the Sihanouk Trail. This led to the US bombing of Cambodia from 1969 until 1973. Following the 1970 coup which installed the right-wing pro-US Khmer Republic, the deposed King Sihanouk gave his support to his former enemies, the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot. With the support of the monarchy and North Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge emerged as a major power, taking Phnom Penh in 1975. The Khmer Rouge ruled the country and carried out the Cambodian genocide from 1975 until 1979 when they were ousted in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. The Vietnamese-occupied People’s Republic of Kampuchea became the de facto government, with attempts to rebuild the country after the genocide mired by limited international recognition and ongoing conflict.

Following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords which formally ended the war with Vietnam, Cambodia was governed briefly by a United Nations mission (1992–93). The UN withdrew after holding elections in which around 90 percent of the registered voters cast ballots. The 1997 coup d’état consolidated power under Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People’s Party, who remain in power. Wikipedia

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An image of a Cambodian Beach Resort

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Giovanni Antonio Canal (18 October 1697 – 19 April 1768), commonly known as Canaletto, was an Italian painter from the Republic of Venice, considered an important member of the 18th-century Venetian school.

Painter of city views or vedute, of Venice, Rome, and London, he also painted imaginary views (referred to as capricci), although the demarcation in his works between the real and the imaginary is never quite clearcut. He was further an important printmaker using the etching technique. In the period from 1746 to 1756, he worked in England where he painted many views of London and other sites including Warwick Castle and Alnwick Castle. He was highly successful in England, thanks to the British merchant and connoisseur Joseph “Consul” Smith, whose large collection of Canaletto’s works was sold to King George III in 1762.

He was born in Venice as the son of the painter Bernardo Canal, hence his mononym Canaletto (“little Canal”), and Artemisia Barbieri. Canaletto served an apprenticeship with his father and his brother of a theatrical scene painter. During his time in Rome, he worked with his father producing the scenery for two operas by the composer Alessandro Scarlatti, Tito Sempronio Greco, and Turno Aricino which were performed at the Teatro Catranica during the carnival season of 1720.

Canaletto was inspired by the Roman vedutista Giovanni Paolo Pannini and started painting the daily life of the city and its people.

After returning from Rome in 1719, he began painting in his topographical style. His first known signed and dated work is Architectural Capriccio (1723, Milan, in a private collection). Studying with the older Luca Carlevarijs, a well-regarded painter of urban cityscapes, he rapidly became his master’s equal.

In 1725, the painter Alessandro Marchesini, who was also the buyer for the Lucchese art collector Stefano Conti, had inquired about buying two more ‘views of Venice’, when the agent urged him to consider instead the work of “Antonio Canale… it is like Carlevaris, but you can see the sun shining in it.” Wikipedia

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An image of a Canaletto Venice Painting

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Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It occupies the whole eastern part of the Balkans and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, and the Black Sea to the east. Bulgaria covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometers (42,855 sq mi), and is the sixteenth largest country in Europe. Sofia is the nation’s capital and largest city; other major cities are Plovdiv, Varna, and Burgas.

One of the earliest societies in the lands of modern-day Bulgaria was the Neolithic Karanovo culture, which dates back to 6,500 BC. In the 6th to 3rd century BC, the region was a battleground for ancient Thracians, Persians, Celts, and Ancient Macedonians; stability came when the Roman Empire conquered the region in AD 45. After the Roman state splintered, tribal invasions in the region resumed. Around the 6th century, these territories were settled by the early Slavs. The Bulgars led by Asparuh of Bulgaria attacked from the lands of (Old Great) Bulgaria and permanently invaded the Balkans in the late 7th century. They established (Danubian) Bulgaria, victoriously recognized by treaty in AD 681 by the Eastern Roman Empire. It dominated most of the Balkans and significantly influenced Slavic cultures by developing the Cyrillic script. The First Bulgarian Empire lasted until the early 11th century when Byzantine emperor Basil II conquered and dismantled it. A successful Bulgarian revolt in 1185 established a Second Bulgarian Empire, which reached its apex under Ivan Asen II (1218–1241). After numerous exhausting wars and feudal strife, the empire disintegrated in 1396 and fell under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries.

The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 resulted in the formation of the third and current Bulgarian state. Many ethnic Bulgarians were left outside the new nation’s borders, which stoked irredentist sentiments that led to several conflicts with its neighbors and alliances with Germany in both world wars. In 1946, Bulgaria came under the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and became a socialist state. The ruling Communist Party gave up its monopoly on power after the revolutions of 1989 and allowed multiparty elections. Bulgaria then transitioned into a democracy and a market-based economy. Since adopting a democratic constitution in 1991, Bulgaria has been a unitary parliamentary republic composed of 28 provinces, with a high degree of political, administrative, and economic centralization.

Bulgaria is a developing country, with an upper-middle-income economy, ranking 56th in the Human Development Index. Its market economy is part of the European Single Market and is largely based on services, followed by industry—especially machine building and mining—and agriculture. Widespread corruption is a major socioeconomic issue; Bulgaria ranked as the most corrupt country in the European Union in 2018. The country also faces a demographic crisis, with its population shrinking annually since around 1990; it currently numbers roughly seven million, down from a peak of nearly nine million in 1988. Bulgaria is a member of the European Union, NATO, and the Council of Europe; it is also a founding member of the OSCE and has taken a seat on the United Nations Security Council three times. Wikipedia

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An image from Bulgaria

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