Vietnamese Cambodian

Vietnamese Cambodian

Vietnamese people constituted Cambodia's largest ethnic minority. Vietnamese settlement in Cambodia dated back to the 17th century when pioneering Vietnamese settlers first established themselves in the Mekong Delta, which was then under Khmer rule. The large influx of Vietnamese settlers in the region allowed Vietnam to impose its cultural norms and values according to Confucian ethics at the expense of the Khmer culture in the early 18th century until the 1860s when French colonisation of Indochina. Ethnic relations between the dominant Khmers and Vietnamese minority have been tense as a result and the Vietnamese have been the subject of racial discrimination at the societal and governmental levels since the 1950s.