The Permanent Archaeological Mission to Indochina, founded by the decree of 15 December 1900, was renamed the École française d'Extrême-Orient on 20 January 1900. Cambodia is the Asian nation in which the School has been most continuously present over the years, with a permanent installation from 1905 to 1975, and then again since 1990.

This new publication, appearing on the eve of the completion of the great restoration project at the Baphuon temple-mount (1995-2011), was undertaken under the high patronage of His Majesty Norodom Sihamoni. King of Cambodia, and François Fillon, the French Prime Minister, and is intended to commemorate this major historical joint achievement of the EFEO and the Cambodian nation.
In order to restore, after a years-long tragic interval, this imposing monument adjacent to the site of the Royal Palace of Angkor, it was necessary to remove mounds of crumbled rock face, retrace the location of the walls, identify three hundred thousand sandstone blocks covering some ten hectares, restore the platforms, and reconstruct the gopuras and galleries of the upper levels. The careful restoration process has made clearer the motives that drove the original builders of Angkor, the construction methods they used, and the time sequence of the subsequent phases of rededication and religious restoration of the temple. In this eleventh-century complex, originally Shivaite, the great reclining Buddha, whose image has occupied the western side of the second level since the second half the sixteenth century, constitutes a spectacular testimony to the transformations that have been at work in the course of the history of Cambodia.
This publication provides an opportunity for the EFEO researchers working in Cambodia and the EFEO's Director, Franciscus Verellen, to sum up the current state of Khmer studies, to pay homage to all those who came earlier in this fascinating field of scholarship, and to offer the wider public an idea of the scope of their ongoing accomplishments.