Destination Laos
Laos History
Early History
Approximately 10,000 years ago, a Neolithic race known as the Hoa Binh spread through most of Southeast Asia including Laos, and over time developed agricultural skills including rice cultivation to supplement their hunting, fishing and gathering. They are said to be the ancestors of the present day Khmu people, a Lao Theung (‘upland Lao’) ethnic group who are known as the indigenous people of Laos. The first known kingdom in what is today Southern Laos had is capital nearby Champassak and dated from around the 5th Century – it was known as the Chenla by the Chinese. Other kingdoms were later founded by Mon peoples in South and Central Laos, including kingdoms near the location of present day Tha Khaek and Vientiane.
Between the 7th and 10th Centuries, the Tai people began migrating south from their ancestral homeland in Southern China, into the northern areas of Thailand, Burma, Vietnam and Laos. Settling along the fertile river valleys they practiced wet rice cultivation and were organized into a type of principality system with each ruled by a local leader as a sort of ‘city state’. Gradually their settlements were established further south along the river valleys in Laos. Muang Sua was the name given to what is presently Luang Prabang, following its conquest in the late 7th Century by Tai people.
By the 13th Century many of these small ‘kingdoms’ or principalities in Laos had been conquered or came under the control of the powerful Khmer Empire of Jayavarman VII, and in Central and Northern Laos were being brought under the control of the emerging Sukhothai Kingdom.
Lan Xang Kingdom
Fa Ngum, a Laotian Prince who had been exiled into Cambodia from a young age and had married a daughter of the Khmer King, set out from Khmer territory in the mid-14th Century with a large army to re-gain control of the parts of Laos which had fallen to the Sukhothai. In 1354 he was crowned King of Lan Xang Hom Khao (Land of a Million Elephants and the White Parasol) Kingdom in Vientiane and the first unified Lao Kingdom was formed. The Kingdom extended from the border of China to Southern Laos near Don Khong (nearby the present Cambodian border), and during that period was one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. The Kingdom of Lan Xang remained largely unified and powerful over the following centuries, fighting off invasions from Vietnam, Siam and Burma until the early 18th Century, when Luang Prabang, Vientiane and Champassak separated into three separate kingdoms as a result of internal divisions and power struggles.
Divided Kingdoms, Foreign Control and Independence
The division of the previous Lan Xang Kingdom into three smaller separate kingdoms left them vulnerable to the more powerful neighbouring kingdoms, and by the late 18th Century all three of the Lao Kingdoms had surrendered to Siam. An attempted rebellion against Siamese rule by the Vientiane Kingdom in the early 19th Century led to the city being sacked, with only Wat Sisaket was spared from destruction, and to harsher Siamese controls over all three of the Lao Kingdoms.
The French had now started to emerge in the region, declaring Cambodia a protectorate in the mid 19th Century, and were making expeditions into the Lao Kingdoms. In 1893 the French were able to force the Siamese to sign a treaty conceding all territories east of the Mekong River to French control, and Laos became a French colony. During World War II the French position in Indochina was weakened, and in 1945 Laos came under brief control of the Japanese and independence was declared. With the end of the war following shortly afterwards the Japanese surrendered and a Lao Government was formed. The French returned to Indochina shortly after, sending the new Lao Government into exile, however in October 1953 France granted Laos full independence.
The following two decades saw Laos caught up in the ensuing power struggles and conflicts in Indochina, and within Laos the struggles for control between Lao Communists (‘Pathet Lao’) and Lao Royalists led to the increasing involvement of both the US and North Vietnamese in Lao affairs. Laos became a ‘sideshow’ for the more well known battles that were being fought in Vietnam during the Second Indochina War (or ‘American War’).
The fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon to the Communists in 1975 signalled the end of the war in Indochina. The Pathet Lao liberated the country from Royal control and American influence – the Lao King abdicated power signaling the end of the monarchy in Laos and in December 1975 the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) was established.
