Prince Norodom Sihanouk had ruled Cambodia since he had wrested independence from the French on 9 November 1953. He had accomplished this task by political maneuvering between both the left and the right to achieve what no other ruler or political group in Indochina had managed, a relatively bloodless transition to independence. During the next ten years, while the conflicts in neighboring Laos and South Vietnam heated up, Sihanouk managed to sustain his delicate domestic political balance while at the same time maintaining his nation's neutrality (guaranteed by the 1954 Geneva Conference that ended the First Indochina War).