Richard A. Melville papers, 1953-2003, undated

Abstract

Richard A. Melville (1932-2005) served in in Laos and Cambodia from 1959-1963 as a U.S State Department Foreign Service officer. He later pursued a career in international banking and finance, serving as President and CEO of Allied Bank International in New York and consulting with the United Nations Development Programme in China. He was the principal author of the International Banking Act (1978) and from 1979 to 1998, served as the personal financial advisor to Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. The collection is comprised of correspondence, scrapbooks, photographs, press clippings, publications, and typescripts related to his work, as well as his efforts to preserve Cambodian antiquities and his research about the Khting Vor, a mythical bovine thought to inhabit Cambodia and Vietnam which he helped to debunk as a hoax. Of particular interest are several albums of photographs Melville took while a Foreign Service officer of Cambodian hill tribes and hunts and material documenting his long relationship with Norodum Sihanouk as both friend and advisor.