Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Mainland Southeast Asia. It borders Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline along the Gulf of Thailand on the southwest. It spans an area of 181,035 square kilometres (69,898 square miles), and has a population of about 17 million. Its capital and most populous city is Phnom Penh.
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. The Indianised kingdom facilitated the spread of first Hinduism and then Buddhism to Southeast Asia and undertook religious infrastructural projects throughout the region. In the 15th century, it began a decline in power (the Post-Angkor Period) until, in 1863, it became the French Protectorate of Cambodia.
Following the 1991 Paris Peace Accords which formally ended the war with Vietnam, Cambodia was governed by a United Nations mission (1992–93). The UN withdrew after the 1993 Cambodian general election, decided by around 90% of registered voters. The 1997 coup d'état consolidated power under Prime Minister Hun Sen and the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). While constitutionally a multi-party state, CPP dominates the political system and dissolved its main opposition party in 2017, making it a de facto one-party state. The UN now designates it a least developed country. (Full article...)