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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
Detail from a door of Wat Ba Khe in Louangphrabang shows courtier
blowing conch shell.
HISTORICAL RESEARCH SHOWS that the rudimentary
structures of a
multiethnic state existed before the founding of the
Kingdom of Lan
Xang in the thirteenth century. These
prethirteenth-century
structures consisted of small confederative communities in
river
valleys and among the mountain peoples, who found security
away
from the well-traveled rivers and overland tracks where
the
institutions and customs of the Laotian people were
gradually
forged in contact with other peoples of the region. During
these
centuries, the stirring of migrations as well as religious
conflict
and syncretism went on more or less continuously. Laos's
shortlived vassalage to foreign empires such as the Cham,
Khmer, and
Sukhothai did nothing to discourage this process of
cultural
identification and, in fact, favored its shaping.
In the thirteenth century--an historically important
watershed-
-the rulers of Louangphrabang (Luang Prabang) constituted
a large
indigenous kingdom with a hierarchical administration.
Even then,
migratory and religious crosscurrents never really ceased.
The
durability of the kingdom itself is attested to by the
fact that it
lasted within its original borders for almost four
centuries.
Today, the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR, or
Laos) covers
only a small portion of the territory of that former
kingdom.
Internecine power struggles caused the splitting up of
Lan Xang
after 1690, and the Lao and the mountain peoples of the
middle
Mekong Valley came perilously close to absorption by
powerful
neighboring rivals, namely Vietnam and Siam (present-day
Thailand);
China never posed a territorial threat. Only the arrival
of the
French in the second half of the nineteenth century
prevented
Laos's political disintegration. In a "conquest of the
hearts" (in
the words of the explorer and colonist Auguste Pavie)--a
singular
event in the annals of colonialism in that it did not
entail the
loss of a single Lao life--France ensured by its actions
in 1893
that Laos's separate identity would be preserved into
modern times.
During the colonial interlude, a few French officials
administered
what their early cartographers labeled, for want of a
better name,
"le pays des Laos" (the land of the Lao, hence the name
Laos),
preserving intact local administrations and the royal
house of
Louangphrabang.
However, Laos's incorporation into French Indochina
beginning
in 1893 brought with it Vietnamese immigration, which was
officially encouraged by the French to staff the middle
levels of
the civil services and militia. During the few months in
1945 when
France's power was momentarily eclipsed, the consequences
of this
Vietnamese presence nearly proved fatal for the fledgling
Lao
Issara (Free Laos) government. The issue of Vietnamese
dominance
over Indochina remained alive into the postindependence
period with
the armed rebellion of the Pathet Lao (Lao Nation), who
proclaimed
themselves part of an Indochina-wide revolutionary
movement. The
Royal Lao Government grappled with this problem for ten
years but
never quite succeeded in integrating the Pathet Lao rebels
peacefully into the national fabric.
By the 1960s, outside powers had come to dominate
events in
Laos, further weakening the Vientiane government's
attempts to
maintain neutrality in the Cold War. For one thing, the
Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the most powerful
entity left
in Indochina by the 1954 Geneva armistice and the exit of
France,
cast a large shadow over the mountains to the west. Also,
the
United States, which had exerted strong pressure on France
on
behalf of the independence of Laos, became involved in a
new war
against what it regarded as the proxies of the Soviet
Union and
China. Even then, however, high-level United States
officials
seemed unsure about Laos's claim to national identity, and
Laos
became the country where the so-called "secret war" was
fought.
In late 1975, months after the fall of Cambodia and the
Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) to the communists, the
Pathet
Lao came to power in Laos, proclaiming that Laos's
territorial
integrity as well as its independence, sovereignty, and
solidarity
with other new regimes of Indochina, would be defended
(see
fig. 1). In a demonstration of this determination, Laos fought
a border
war with Thailand in 1988, and protracted negotiations
were
necessary to demarcate the border between the two
countries.
Internally, the regime proved ruthless in stamping out
political
and armed opposition. Only since the introduction of the
New
Economic Mechanism in 1986 has the government made some
headway in
the long and difficult process of bettering the lives of
its
citizens.
Data as of July 1994
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