Here is an interesting articles written by Henri Locard, The Cambodia Daily, Phnom Penh
The previous article stated: "The French parliament, on June 4, 1949, transferred the territory of Cochinchina from Cambodian to Vietnamese administration...
"I am well aware that this canard represents a widespread belief among the Cambodian public. Unfortunately, it is not 60 years of loss that this country should be mourning, but very soon four centuries, at least in the case of Prey Nokor, now Saigon.
King Chey Cetta (1618-1628), who had married an Annamese Princess, to seek the protection of the Nguyen in Hue after the sacking of Longvek in 1594, , was asked by a trade delegation from Hue for official permission to found trading companies in Prey Nokor province. The Annamese also asked and obtained the permission to levy commercial taxes in prey Nokor province. That was how the Nguyen encouraged Annamese settlements in Cochinchina. By 1628 and Chey Chetta s death, the Cambodian provinces of Prey Nokor (Saigon) and Kampeap Sraka Trey (Bien Hoa) provinces had fallen under Annamese tutelage. The de facto annexation became official in 1699.
In 1715, the Dai-Viet was granted the port of Peam (Hatien) on the Gulf of Thailand where under Ang Em (1710-1722) 3,000 Chinese had taken refuge from mainland China. One of them, named Mac Cuu, would exercise local power and defend the seashore against the Siamese in the name of Ang Em. By the middle of the 18th century, the whole of what is known today as Kampuchea Krom, or the Mekong delta, was under Vietnamese administration. The entire area was no longer under the sway of the Cambodian king well over a century before the French conquered Saigon in 1859.
The Cambodian public could stop blaming the colonizing French for a situation that was much beyond their control in the Mekong delta.
The 90 years of French colonization left Cambodia one third larger than when they arrived, with the return of Battambang and Sien Reap, plus the whole of the North of the country. Beside, the population of the country was also multiplied by at least five times.
Cambodian public opinion needs to be reminded that, if at the time of the dissolution of Indochina in 1949, Cochinchina had been attached to Cambodia, the Vietnamization of khmer land would have been complete, as the Vietnamese population would have been an overwhelming majority in the new country that would have resulted. Henceforth, the Vietnamese would have dominated all the governments in Phnom Penh.
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