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Cambodia: 'Floating Village' (on Tonle Sap) as preceived and engraved by Jakobus van der Schley, 1750

Cambodia: 'Floating Village' (on Tonle Sap) as preceived and engraved by Jakobus van der Schley, 1750

Tonle Sap, Cambodia's great lake, is famous for its floating villages of (mainly) ethnic Vietnamese fisherfolk. In this Dutch engraving the 'floating village' is imagined by the engraver to be a single unit floating on a giant barge-like boat, complete with a house with smoking chimmney.

In reality, of course, each house in a Cambodian 'floating village' is detached and floats independently. An interesting examples of early (1750) Orientalism.

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