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George Cœdès

French historian (1886–1969)

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  • 3 chapters

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Biography

Cœdès was born in Paris to a family known as having settled in the region of Strasbourg before 1740. His ancestors worked for the royal Treasury. His grandfather, Louis-Eugène Cœdès was a painter, pupil of Léon Coignet. His father Hippolyte worked as a banker. It has also, incorrectly, been asserted that he was descended from Hungarian-Jewish émigrés.

Cœdès became director of the National Library of Thailand in 1918, and in 1929 became director of L'École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), where he remained until 1946. He was also an editor of the Journal of the Siam Society during the 1920s. In 1935, he married a Cambodian woman named Neang Yap.

After leaving EFEO in 1946, he lived in Paris until he died in 1969.

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