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history laos.

History of Laos
The Lao state dates only from 1945. The idea of a separate Lao nationality was
formed during the 19th century, when western ideas of national identity reached
South-East Asia, and when the Lao-speaking peoples were being squeezed between
two expansionist powers, Siam (Thailand) and Vietnam. The current borders of Laos
were created by France in 1893 and 1904. Today the official history of Laos is traced
back to the Kingdom of Lān Xāng, which was founded in 1353. But in reality the Lao
share a common history with the Siamese and other people of the Tai language group,
and Lān Xāng was only one of a number of Tai kingdoms in a region which had a
broad linguistic and cultural unity before the arrival of outside powers.
 
Early history
The Tai (also spelled Dai) are a linguistic group originating in southern China, which
includes the Lao, the Siamese, the people of the Shan region of north-eastern Burma,
the Zhuang people of Guangxi Province in China and the Tho and Nung people of
northern Vietnam. Under pressure from the expansion of the Han Chinese, the Tai
began to migrate into South-East Asia during the first millennium AD. They displaced
earlier peoples (including the iron age culture who made the great stone jars from
which the Plain of Jars in central Laos takes its name). The Mekong River, which
flows through what is now Laos, was a major migration route, but the strength of the
Khmer Empire (Cambodia) prevented the Tai from dominating the Mekong Valley.
Instead the main area of Tai settlement was further south in the Chao Phraya Valley,
where they formed a series of kingdoms ancestral to modern Siam and Thailand.
During the first millennium AD the Tai peoples were loosely organised in small
entities known as muang or mandalas. They were heavily influenced by the more
advanced cultures around them: the Khmer to the south-east, and the Hindu cultures
of India to the west. Most of the Tai were converted to a form of Hinduism, traces of
which can still be seen in Lao religious practice today. Between the 6th and 9th
centuries AD Buddhism was introduced into the Tai-speaking lands, probably via
Burma, and became the dominant religion. But the Lao retain many animist religious
practices from the pre-Buddhist era.
As the Tai peoples became established, they divided into a number of linguistic subgroups.
These included the Tai-Lao, who during the 11th and 12th centuries AD
spread along the middle Mekong Valley and across the Khōrāt Plateau (now the Isan

region of north-eastern Thailand). Their advance down the Mekong was blocked at
Champāsak by the Khmers, who built the great temple at Wat Phū. The Lao in turn
divided into further groups, based on where they lived in relation to the river. These
were the Lao-Lum (Lao of the valley floor), the Lao-Thoeng (Lao of the mountain
slopes) and the Lao-Sūng (Lao of the mountain tops). This latter group included
various linguistic minorities only distantly related to the Tai. The Lao-Lum, having
the best farming land and the best access to river transport, became the wealthiest of
the Tai-Lao peoples. These divisions have haunted Lao history and still exist today,
with many Lao-Thoeng and Lao-Sūng people having only a tenuous loyalty to a Lao-
Lum dominated state.                                                            
The rise and fall of various early Lao states is now recorded only in myth. The earliest
historically identifiable Lao leader is Khun Lô, who probably conquered the Luang
Phrabāng area from non-Tai people in the 12th century. Because the Mekong is
divided into three distinct navigable sections by rapids, between Luang Phrabāng and
Viang Chan (Vientiane) and between Viang Chan and Savannakhēt, these three towns
became the centres of three distinct Lao-Lum mandalas. This pattern was disrupted
by the Mongol invasion of 1253, when part of Kublai Khan's army advanced down
the Mekong to attack the Khmers. In the wake of the Mongol withdrawal a new
kingdom were founded by the Siamese at Sukhothai, which was later succeeded by a
more powerful Siamese state with its capital at Ayutthaya (founded in 1351). The
kingdom of Lān Nā, based at Chiang Mai and containing both Siamese and Lao
elements, was also founded at this time.
In response, the Tai-Lao rulers of Luang Phrabāng (which was then called Xiang
Dong Xiang Thong) formed a new state which, while still nominally subject to the
Mongol rulers of China, became the leading force among the Lao peoples. From
about 1271 this state was ruled by a dynasty called the Phrayā. In about 1350 a prince
of this dynasty, Fā Ngum, fled the court with his father after a dispute and sought
refuge with the Khmers at Angkor, where he married a royal princess. In 1353 he
returned at the head of an army (presumably with Khmer aid), captured Xiang Dong
Xiang Thong and founded a new Lao state which covered the whole Lao-speaking
Mekong valley. This was Lān Xāng, the Kingdom of a Million Elephants.
The Kingdom of Lān Xāng
    Over the next decade Fā Ngum sought to bring all the Lao under his authority. He
conquered most of the Khōrāt Plateau, as well as territory in what is now northwestern
Vietnam. The Khmer court considered him to be a Khmer vassal, but he
succeeded in establishing Lao rule over Champāsak and perhaps as far south as Stung
Treng in what is now northern Cambodia. His wife is credited with introducing
Theravada Buddhism, which had been brought to Siam by missionaries from Sri
Lanka in the 13th century, and from there spread to the Khmer Empire. In 1368,
however, Fā Ngum's wife died, and shortly after the Mongol dynasty in China was
overthrown. These events broke two key relationships sustaining Fā Ngum's power,
and in 1373 he was overthrown as a result of a court intrigue and replaced by his son
Unheuan, who took the name Sāmsaentai ("Lord of 300,000 Tai").
Lān Xāng was not a state in the modern sense of the word. The king at Xiang Dong
Xiang Thong directly ruled and taxed only the town and surrounding area. The lords

of the constituent mandalas raised their own taxes and ruled as they saw fit. Their
duties to the king were to pay an agreed tribute, attend the court for major ceremonies,
and raise their local forces to support the king when he waged war. Thus Lān Xāng
was a loose feudal federation rather than a centralised kingdom. This gave it great
flexibility, but also meant that its coherence depended on the personal and religious
authority of the king. For half a century after Sāmsaentai's death in 1416 there was a
series of weak kings, and the prestige of Lān Xāng declined. By the 15th century all
the Tai peoples faced challenges from their increasingly powerful neighbours, the
Vietnamese to the east and the Burmese to the west (the Ayutthaya Siamese had
extinguished the power of the Khmers in 1431). In 1479, for reasons that are unclear,
the Vietnamese under their great king Le Thanh Tong invaded the Lao lands, and
sacked Luang Phrabāng.
In response, king Vixun (reigned 1501-20) took two important steps to shore up the
throne. First he ordered that the chronicle of royal history known as the Nithān Khun
Bôrum (Story of King Bôrum) be written down, providing an important source of
legitimacy for the dynasty. Second he brought to Lān Xāng from Angkor a precious
gold image of the Buddha, known as the Phra Bāng or Holy Buddha Image. (The
traditional belief is that the image was cast in Sri Lanka in the 1st century AD and
later presented to the Khmer kings. The current view is that the statue is of Khmer
origin and dates from the Khmer Empire period.) These two steps emphasised that the
king of Lān Xāng ruled both by hereditary right as the descendent of the legendary
King Bôrum, and by his accumulated merit, the key concept in Buddhism.
After Vixun's death, two strong kings, Phōthisālarāt (1520-48) and his son
Xētthāthirāt (1548-71) maintained the strength and prestige of the kingdom. In 1558,
however, the first of a series of major Burmese invasions took place. The Burmese
sacked Chiang Mai, ending the independence of Lān Nā, and devastated the western
areas of Lān Xāng. In response, Xētthāthirāt formed an alliance with Ayutthaya, and
in 1560 he moved his capital down the river to Viang Chan, which was both more
defensible and closer to Siamese aid. Here he built a great new temple, the Ho Phra
Kaeo, where he installed the ancient and revered Emerald Buddha (rescued by the Lao
from the fall of Chiang Mai) as a new symbol of his reign. The Phra Bāng was left
behind at Xiang Dong Xiang Thong to protect the city, which was now renamed
Luang Phrabāng ("great Phra Bāng").
In 1569 the Burmese struck again, capturing Ayutthaya and leaving Lān Xāng
exposed. The Burmese briefly occupied Viang Chan in 1570, but after a few months
Xētthāthirāt was able to drive them out, leaving his prestige higher than ever. But the
following year he attempted an invasion of Cambodia, in the course of which he was
killed and his army dispersed. This disaster left Lān Xāng defenceless against the
Burmese, and for the next 60 years Lān Xāng was a Burmese vassal, sometimes under
direct occupation. There were several periods when there was no king at all, and the
Lao seemed doomed to be absorbed by the Siamese or the Burmese.
But in 1637 Surinyavongsā, the greatest and last king of Lān Xāng, claimed the throne
and re-established the independence of the kingdom. He established cordial relations
with the Siamese King Narai at Ayutthaya, and this alliance was strong enough to
ward off the Burmese and the Vietnamese for many years. Under his rule the kingdom
became increasingly prosperous, and Viang Chan was endowed with many temples

and palaces (of which few survive). The city became a great centre of Buddhist
scholarship, with monks coming from Siam and Cambodia to study in its wats
(schools).
It was during the reign of Surinyavongsā that the first Europeans saw the Lao lands. A
Dutch merchant, Gerritt van Wuysthoff arrived by river from Phnom Penh in about
1641. His account attracted the attention of the Jesuits, who were always keen to be
the first to claim the souls of newly-discovered peoples. The first missionary,
Giovanni-Maria Leria, arrived soon after van Wuysthoff's return, and he stayed for six
years, learning the language and studying the religion and customs of the Lao. Most
of our knowledge of Lān Xāng in its later years comes from Leria's records. He won
few converts to Christianity, but he did succeed in making the outside world aware of
the wealth of the Lao kingdom.
Two circumstances combined to bring about the fall of Lān Xāng. Surinyavongsā had
only one son, whom he caused to be executed for adultery. On Surinyavongsā's death
in 1694, therefore, there was no heir, and a battle for the throne broke out into which
Lān Xāng's neighbours were soon drawn. The second factor was the kingdom's
isolation. Both the Siamese and the Vietnamese had been in contact with the
Europeans much longer than the Lao, and had acquired firearms, while the landlocked
Lao could not trade directly with the Europeans. Divided and leaderless, they were no
match for the Siamese with their guns and European advisers. Vietnam (under Trinh
Can) sent an army into Lān Xāng and so did the Ayutthaya kingdom under king
Petratcha. After a decade of warfare and anarchy, Lān Xāng was broken up in 1707
into its three constituent parts, with Siamese vassal kingdoms at Luang Phrabāng,
Viang Chan and Champāsak. Viang Chan and Champāsak paid tribute to the
Vietnamese as well as the Siamese - a fact of considerable importance later.
Today official Lao historiography describes Lān Xāng as a Lao national state, and
thus the direct ancestor of modern Laos. This view needs considerable qualification.
There was no real distinction between the Siamese, the Lao and other Tai-speaking
people before the 19th century. Their culture and religion were almost identical and
their languages closely related. The kings of Lān Xāng were Lao-Lum, but the
peoples under their rule spoke a variety of languages, including Siamese, Khmer and
various Lao-Thoeng, Lao-Sūng and other minority languages. The Lao-Lum treated
the upland Lao not as fellow-countrymen but as inferiors, referring to them as khā
(slaves) and maeo (savages). The basis of the kings' authority was dynastic and
religious, not ethnic or national. When necessity required, they paid tribute to
Siamese, Vietnamese, Burmese or Chinese rulers with equal alacrity. As will be seen,
it was only after the fall of Lān Xāng, when the Siamese had absorbed some European
ideas of national superiority and imposed a semi-colonial rule on the Viang Chan Lao,
that a Lao national consciousness began to appear.
Siamese domination
What saved the Lao was the arrival of European colonialism in the region. This is a
point that the current official history of Laos, with its emphasis on the later anticolonial
struggles, prefers not to mention, but there is no denying that the end of
Siamese rule over parts of the Lao lands and creation of a Lao state were the work of
the French, and were a by-product of the rivalry between the French and the British

colonial empires. Unlike the Dutch and Portuguese, these powers were not content to
trade with the states of South-East Asia - they sought territorial control. Burma, which
had been the terror of the Tai peoples for centuries, was annexed by British India in
stages between 1826 and 1885. Vietnam, the other traditional power in the region,
succumbed to the French, with a protectorate established over southern Vietnam and
eastern Cambodia in 1862 and over the rest of Vietnam in 1883.
These developments spelled trouble for Siam, which found itself caught between two
aggressive colonial powers. Under the modernising kings Rama IV (1851-68) and
Rama V (1868-1910), Siam sought to make itself a modern state able to defend its
independence, but the borders of its ramshackle, multi-ethnic empire were not
defensible. The 1883 treaty with the Emperor of Vietnam gave the French the right to
control all territories which were or had been tributary to the court of Hué, and not
surprisingly they chose to interpret this very broadly. Most of the Lao lands had at one
time or another been nominal tributaries of Vietnam, although this had frequently
meant nothing in practice. The French imposed a European conception of statehood
on these feudal relationships, and from them concocted a territorial claim to all of the
former kingdom of Lān Xāng.
The principal French agent in this was Auguste Pavie (1847-1925), who had already
spent 17 years in Vietnam and Cambodia furthering French interests when he was
appointed French vice-consul in Luang Phrabāng in 1886. Pavie was also a noted
explorer and scholar with a genuine affection for the Indochinese peoples, whom he
saw as being liberated from ignorance and feudalism by an enlightened France. He
regarded the Siamese rulers of the Lao lands as corrupt and oppressive. When Luang
Phrabāng was attacked by Tai tribespeople from the hills, and the Siamese
representatives fled, it was Pavie who organised the defence of the town and rescued
the elderly King Unkham. The king was so grateful that he asked for French
protection in place of Siamese rule. Pavie was unable to arrange this, although he did
bring about the annexation of the Tai-speaking Sipsông Chu area to French Vietnam.
Pavie called his building of French goodwill in Laos the "conquest of hearts," but
ultimately it would require force to evict the Siamese.                
By 1890 the French authorities in Hanoi, backed by a powerful party in the French
Parliament, were determined on the annexation of the whole of Siam, with the
detachment of Laos seen only as the first stage. In 1892 Pavie was appointed French
Consul-General in Bangkok, and demanded that the Siamese accept French
"commercial agents" in the main Lao towns, from Luang Phrabāng to Stung Treng.
Pavie argued that France should demand a protectorate over all the Lao lands on both
sides of the Mekong. This, he argued, would so weaken Siam that its full annexation
could soon follow. Fully aware of what the French were up to, Siam rushed troops
and administrators into the Lao lands, but its infrastructure was not well developed
enough for it to take a really firm grip on such distant provinces. Furthermore Rama
V's belief that the British would support him in any clash with the French proved
unfounded.
In July 1893 minor border clashes led to an armed confrontation, with French
gunboats sailing up the Chao Phraya to threaten Bangkok. Faced with such threats,
Siam capitulated, and France established a protectorate over everything east of the
Mekong. In 1904 there was a further clash, largely manufactured by the French.

    Again the British did not come to Siam's defence, and again Siam was forced to back
down, ceding two strips of land west of the Mekong: Xainaburī in the north and
Champāsak in the south. At the same time Stung Treng was moved from Laos to
Cambodia and some modifications made to the border between Laos and Vietnam.
These changes established the Lao borders as they have been ever since.
The French expansionists, urged on by Pavie, now wanted to press on and demand the
Lao-speaking lands on the Khōrāt Plateau, but at this point the British intervened.
Having gained control of Burma and Malaya, they preferred to maintain Siam as a
buffer state between their empire and the French, rather than allow the French to
annex all of Siam. By 1909 the situation in Europe had changed, and France decided
it needed a British alliance against the rising power of Germany. Paris therefore
decided that empire-building in Siam was no longer worth the risks of a clash with
British interests.
The aborted French grab for control of all the Lao lands thus created the current Lao
borders, which became permanent when Britain opposed any further French advance
into Siam. But it also created the predicament which has faced the Lao people ever
since. If the French had not interfered at all in Siam's internal affairs, the Lao would
probably have been quietly absorbed into a greater Tai-speaking Siamese state. If on
the other hand France had succeeded in detaching all the Lao lands from Siam, there
might today be a major Lao state, a true reconstruction of Lān Xāng on both banks of
the Mekong, with perhaps 20 million people. Instead, the Lao state today has 6
million people, of whom only half speak Lao as their first language. The Isan region
of Thailand, meanwhile, contains 15 million Lao-speakers (the language is now
officially called "North-East Thai", but it is almost identical to standard Lao). With
the recent large migration from Isan to Bangkok, there are now more Lao speakers in
Bangkok than in Viang Chan, the Lao capital. The Lao are almost unique in this lack
of congruence between their geographical distribution and the borders of what claims
to be their nation state.
Sisavang Vatthana, and know little
  Having failed in their grand plan to annex Siam, the French lost interest in Laos, and
for the next fifty years it remained a backwater of the French empire in Indochina.
Officially, the Kingdom of Luang Phrabāng and the Principality of Champāsak
remained protectorates with internal autonomy, but in practice they were controlled
by French residents. King Sīsavāngvong, who became King of Luang Phrabāng in
1904, remained conspicuously loyal to the French through his 55-year reign. The rest
of the country was at first divided into two regions, Upper Laos and Lower Laos, each
controlled by a Commandant, based in Luang Phrabāng and Pākxē respectively. Later
the country was divided into eleven provinces, each with a French resident. In 1898
all the Lao lands were put under the general supervision of a Resident-Superior, based
in Viang Chan (which the French spelled Vientiane) and answerable to the French
Governor-General in Hanoi. Security, customs and communications were controlled
from Hanoi, and therefore much neglected in the Lao lands, which had a low budget
priority. The local authorities handled health, education and justice, and were
expected to fund their own operations from local revenue.

The French inherited a territory which was depopulated and demoralised by years of
warfare and disorder: in 1910 there were only 600,000 people in Laos, including
many Chinese and Vietnamese. To establish order, a local militia, the Garde Indigène,
was established, comprising a mixture of Lao and Vietnamese troops under French
officers. Banditry was suppressed, slavery abolished, and the Lao-Lum aristocracy's
practice of demanding labour service from Lao Theong and Lao Sūng peoples was
stopped. Vietnamese clerks were brought in to provide administrative support to the
very small number of French officials who ran the country - in 1910 there were only
200 French in the whole country. Vietnamese and Chinese merchants arrived to
repopulate the towns (particularly Viang Chan) and revive trade.
The French took over the head tax previously collected by the Siamese, but since
French officials were less corrupt than the Siamese had been the amount collected
increased. The Lao were also made universally liable for labour service, fixed at ten
days per head per year, although exemption could be bought with a cash payment.
The Lao-Lum much resented this imposition, seen by them as fit only for upland Lao
and slaves. Vietnamese and Chinese were exempt from labour service, but paid a
higher head tax in cash. Further revenue was gained by making opium, alcohol and
salt state monopolies. Nevertheless the administration in Laos was always short of
money, and development, particularly in the uplands, was very slow.
On the whole the Lao found French rule preferable to Siamese rule, and this ensured
that for some time there no organised resistance to their presence. In 1901, however, a
revolt broke out in the south, led by a Lao Theong called Ong Kaeo, a self-proclaimed
phū mī bun (holy man) who led a messianic cult. This revolt was not specifically anti-
French or Lao nationalist in character, but attracted wide support and was not
effectively suppressed until 1910 when Ong Kaeo was killed. One of Ong Kaeo's
lieutenants, Ong Kommadam, however, survived and went on to become a Lao
nationalist leader in later years. After the Chinese revolution of 1911, there was also
trouble in northern Laos as Chinese warlords and bandits carried their fights across
the ill-defined border and as Lao Sūng peoples with links to China were drawn into
the conflict. French attempts to regulate the opium trade also provoked resistance in
some areas. In 1914-16 there was a Hmong rebellion known as "the madman's revolt"
after its leader, a shaman called Pāchai. Later Lao official histories portray all these
disturbances as "anti-colonial struggles," but this is an exaggeration.
The favourable comparison between French rule and Siamese rule led to a
considerable re-migration of Lao from the Isan area to Laos, boosting the population
and reviving trade. The Mekong valley towns such as Viang Chan, Savannakhēt and
Paksē began to grow, although they remained majority Vietnamese and Chinese.
Agriculture and trade also revived. The French hoped to divert Lao trade down the
Mekong to Saigon, but they were unable to compete with the quicker and cheaper
trade route through Bangkok, particularly once the Siamese railways reached the
Mekong in the late 1920s. This gave Siam a continuing economic importance to Laos
even after Siamese political control had ended: a fact which has not changed. The
French proposed a railway over the mountains to Vietnam, but capital for this project
was never forthcoming from Paris. The French did however build the most important
road in Laos, National Route 13 from Viang Chan to Paksē (more recently it has been
extended north to Luang Phrabāng). But economic development remained slow. There
was some tin-mining and some coffee-growing, but the country's isolation and

difficult terrain meant that it never became profitable from a colonialist point of view.
More than 90% of the Lao remained subsistence farmers, growing just enough surplus
produce to sell for cash to pay their taxes.
Most of the French who came to Laos as officials, settlers or missionaries developed a
strong affection for the country and its people, and many devoted decades to what
they saw as bettering the lives of the Lao. Some took Lao wives, learned the language,
became Buddhists and "went native" - something more acceptable in the French
Empire than in the British. With the racial attitudes typical of Europeans at this time,
however, they tended to classify the Lao as gentle, amiable, childlike, naive and lazy,
regarding them with what one writer called "a mixture of affection and exasperation."
They had no belief that the Lao would ever be able to govern themselves, and were
slow to establish a system of western education for the Lao. The first secondary
school in Viang Chan did not open until 1921, and only in the 1930s did the first Lao
students get a higher French education in Hanoi or Paris. Gradually a network of
primary schools spread through the lowland areas, and by the 1930s literacy rates
among the Lao Lum had increased considerably. But the upland areas, where people
spoke either Lao dialects or non-Lao languages, remained untouched.
Among the first Lao to get advanced western educations were three aristocratic
brothers, sons (by different mothers) of Chau Bunkhong, the uparāt (hereditary viceking)
of Luang Phrabāng: these were Prince Phetxarāt (1890-1959), Prince
Suvannaphūmā (1901-84) and Prince Suphānuvong (1909-95), who were later to
dominate Lao politics for many years. Phetxarāt graduated from the École Coloniale
in Paris and was the first Lao to study at Oxford University. Both Suvannaphūmā and
Suphānuvong graduated in engineering in France. Suvannaphūmā also studied
classics and read Latin and Greek as well as Pali: becoming the very model of a
French scholar-politician. It is a standard observation of post-colonial history that
enlightened colonialism brought about its own demise by creating a class of westerneducated
intellectuals who then became leaders of anti-colonialist movements. The
French education of men like Phetxarāt, Suvannaphūmā and Suphānuvong would
seem to confirm this in the case of Laos, but in fact all were essentially Lao aristocrats
first and nationalist intellectuals second, even though Suphānuvong eventually
became the figurehead leader of the Lao Communists. Laos never produced a figure
like Pol Pot, a fully formed French Marxist ideologue.
The real French contribution to Lao nationalism, apart from the creation of the Lao
state itself, was made by the oriental specialists of the French School of the Far East
(École Française d'Extrême-Orient), who undertook major archaeological works,
found and published Lao historical texts, standardised the written Lao language,
renovated neglected temples and tombs and in 1931 founded the Independent Lao
Buddhist Institute in Viang Chan, where Pali was taught so that the Lao could study
their own ancient history. The restoration and preservation of the cultural glories of
Luang Phrabāng is a lasting tribute to French scholarship and endeavour.
The French stimulation of Lao culture and historical studies created a new Lao
intellectual class, which was soon led by Phetxarāt, a gifted scholar. Phetxarāt is today
remembered as a nationalist, but at first he was the leading Lao collaborator with the
French. In 1923 he was appointed Indigenous Inspector of Political and
Administrative Affairs, making him the highest ranking Lao in the country. He
 worked to increase the number of Lao in administrative positions and to reduce the
role of the Vietnamese, whom the Lao disliked much more than they did the French.
Phetxarāt and other leading Lao favoured French rule because it protected them from
the Siamese and Vietnamese. It was only when French power and prestige were broken that the Lao elite turned against the French.
The Crisis of World War II
    Laos might have drifted along as a pleasant backwater of the French Empire
indefinitely had not outside events impacted sharply on the country from 1940
onwards. The fall of France to the Nazi German invasion was a profound shock to
Lao faith in France's ability to protect them. The greatest threat to Laos was now
Siamese irredentism. In December 1940 Marshall Phibun's military regime in
Bangkok attacked French Indochina with the covert assistance of the Japanese,
seizing western Cambodia, and reclaiming Xainaburī and Champāsak, which been
part of French Laos since 1904. The Vichy French authorities allowed Japan to base
troops in Indochina, though not at this stage in Laos. The fear of being left exposed to
Thailand (as Phibun had renamed Siam) and Japan led to the formation of the first
Lao nationalist organisation, the Movement for National Renovation, in January 1941,
led by Phetxarāt and supported by local French officials, though not by the Vichy
authorities in Hanoi. This group wrote the current Lao national anthem and designed
the current Lao flag, while paradoxically pledging support for France.
     There matters rested until the liberation of France in 1944, bringing Charles de Gaulle
to power. This meant the end of the alliance between Japan and the French
administration in Indochina. The Japanese had no intention of allowing the Gaullists
to take over, and in late 1944 they staged a military coup in Hanoi. French Gaullist
units fled over the mountains to Laos, pursued by the Japanese, who occupied Viang
Chan in March 1945 and Luang Phrabāng in April. King Sīsavāngvong was detained
by the Japanese, but his son Crown Prince Savāngvatthanā called on all Lao to assist
the French, and many Lao died fighting with the French resistance against the
Japanese occupiers.
    Prince Phetxarāt, however, opposed this position, and thought that Lao independence
could be gained by siding with the Japanese, who made him Prime Minister of Luang
Phrabāng, though not of Laos as a whole. In practice the country was in chaos and
Phetxarāt's government had no real authority. Another Lao group, the Lao Sēri (Free
Lao), became agents of the Thais, which also meant supporting the Japanese. A
further complication was the arrival of substantial numbers of Vietnamese forces
loyal to the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Although the official Communist line at
this time was unite all forces against the Japanese, the Vietnamese hated the French
and so supported Phetxarāt's government.
   In August 1945, just as the country was dissolving into a multi-sided civil war, Japan
suddenly surrendered to the Allies. In Laos as in all the newly-liberated capitals of
East Asia, there was a scramble to fill the power-vacuum. The main contenders were
the Gaullist French, whose guerilla forces were holding out with Lao assistance in
several parts of the country, and a new Lao nationalist group led by Phetxarāt, the Lao
Issara (also meaning Free Lao). The nearest Allied army was the Chinese Nationalist
army in southern China, and this force was supposed to march south and receive the
Japanese surrender. The United States was officially opposed to the re-establishment
of French rule in Indochina, and the British could be expected to be unhelpful. But the
French had no intention of giving up Indochina without a fight.


See also
History of Laos since 1945
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Laos_to_1945"

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