LAN XANG
Despite the physical barriers that divided it from its neighbors, the
kingdom of Lan Xang was repeatedly invaded. In the late fifteenth
century, Vietnamese armies marched through Xieng Khouang all the way to
the capital at Luang Prabang and held that city for a time before they
were repelled. During the sixteenth century, Siam (the old name for
Thailand) and Burma invaded Lan Xang five times, causing the reigning
monarch to move the capital to Vientiane. Toward the end of the
seventeenth century, disputes over succession broke Lan Xang into the
aforementioned three kingdoms. The eighteenth century saw Burma sack
Luang Prabang in 1753 and again in 1771, and Siam attack Vientiane in
1778. In the early nineteenth century, the Siamese again invaded
Vientiane and reduced it to ruins, while the Vietnamese claimed the
provinces of Xieng Khouang and Khammouane. The Laotian kingdoms managed
to survive by acknowledging the suzerainty of both Siam and Vietnam.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new imperial power, France,
appeared on the scene and eventually made Laos into one of its five
Asian colonial possessions (six, if one counts a small territory France
held in southern China).
FRENCH INVASION
In 1858, the French sent the first of several naval expeditions to
Danang, a port on the eastern seaboard of Vietnam. At that point they
were interested mainly in securing the right to trade and not
territorial aggrandizement per se, but the Vietnamese, who had chafed
for almost ten centuries under Chinese rule, fiercely resisted the
French and drove their ships off. Three years later, however, the French
returned and took Saigon. Located in the southern part of Vietnam,
Saigon became the beachhead for the French conquest of the rest of what
eventually became French Indochina.
FRENCH PROTECTION
Having acquired all of Vietnam, the French now thought of themselves as
heir to the Vietnamese claims in neighboring Laos. Since the Siamese had
tried repeatedly in the late 1880s and early 1890s to consolidate their
hold over the Laotian kingdoms, when the French, in the person of
Auguste Pavie, appeared on the scene, the Laotian rulers were willing to
consider placing themselves under French protection as a counterweight
to domination by the Siamese. Pavie had gained the favor of the king of
Luang Prabang after he saved the old monarch's life during a raid on the
latter's capital in 1887.
ADMINISTERED FROM SAIGON
Within French Indochina -- composed now of Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China,
Cambodia, and Laos -- the French considered landlocked Laos the least
important colony. In contrast to the forty thousand or so French people
who descended upon the three regions of Vietnam to govern the local
population and to exploit the natural resources there, only a hundred
French colonial servants were allotted for Laos. This handful of
Frenchmen administered Laos with the aid of Vietnamese, whom they
brought to Laos to serve in the lower echelons of the colonial
bureaucracy and in the Garde Indigene, a local militia. Meanwhile, the
Chinese, who had traded in Laos for centuries, were encouraged to
continue handling the retail and wholesale trade of the colony.
DIRECT FRENCH RULE
The French controlled the royal houses mainly by reserving the right to
approve who might succeed the king of Luang Prabang or any of the
princes whenever one of them died. Naturally, they always chose
compliant figureheads. Outside the kingdom of Luang Prabang, Laotians
came under direct French rule.
VIETNAMESE ASSISTANTS
The French made Vientiane the administrative capital of Laos and divided
the country into fourteen provinces called khoueng, each of vhich was in
turn carved into cantons called muong. The muong were divided into
districts called tasseng, each of which was made up of villages called
ban. Lao village chiefs served as intermediaries between the French
colonial administrators and their Vietnamese assistants, on the one
hand, and their own people, the Lao, as well as other ethnic groups, on
the other hand.
FRENCH EXPLOITATION
The French made little effort to develop Laos economically, socially, or
culturally. After discovering that their hopes of creating a river
empire in the colony was but a pipe dream, the only resource they tried
to exploit was the country's tin deposits. They built few roads and no
railways in Laos, as they had elsewhere in French Indochina. In the six
decades that the French ruled Laos, they did not establish a single high
school in the colony. In 1940, a total of only seven thousand Laotian
youngsters were attending primary school. Those who desired and could
afford a high school education had to go to Vietnam or France to get
one. To make Laos pay for itself, the French found four ways to raise
revenue: by levying a head tax on all males between the ages of eighteen
and sixty; by taxing the sale of opium, alcohol, and salt; by requiring
each adult male to perform unpaid corvee labor; and by establishing a
government monopoly on opium. The first three means of raising revenues
are described below, while the French colonial government's opium
monopoly will be dealt with in the next section.
HARDSHIP
The head tax was onerous because it had to be paid in cash. At that
time, Laos had a subsistence and barter economy. To pay their taxes in
cash, people had to find ways to produce commodities that could be sold
for money. In many instances, they had to pay more than the officially
imposed amount because the tax collectors demanded additional money for
their own pockets. The taxes on opium, alcohol, and salt were imposed on
everyone, regardless of whether or not a person consumed any of the
taxed items. The corvee required each adult male to contribute fifteen
to twenty days of work a year. Not only were the men not paid for such
work but, as Jou Yee Xiong, one of the narrators in this book, recalls,
they often had to walk long distances to the work sites and had to
supply their own food. The laborers cleared jungles, removed rocks from
rivers, built and repaired roads, served as porters and messengers, and
performed other kinds of hard, common labor. It was possible to buy off
one's corvee requirement by paying an additional tax. Fines, imposed for
even minor infringements, further enriched the colonial coffers. Though
the receipts from these various forms of taxation and from fines covered
only about 15 percent of the colonial budget, they imposed great
hardship on the people, some of whom resisted by rising up against the
French in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only a few
studies of these uprisings have been made, but a number of historians
believe that resentment over taxation and the corvee was the main cause
of the insurrections, even though some of them were led by religious
figures and were millenarian in character."' Most of the rebels were
highlanders because the French, who administered some of the areas
occupied by the hill tribes as military outposts, were especially harsh
on them. The French practice of using Lao chieftains and a few educated
Tai Dam (the Black Tai, another ethnic group) to collect taxes from the
highlanders meant that the payment of taxes was not tempered by any
bonds of kinship or ethnic solidarity.
JAPANESE OCCUPATION
One of the "midwives" of the Laotian independence movement was Japan,
which has played a paradoxical role in the national liberation movements
of many Southeast Asian nations. On the one hand, it was Japan that
pushed the emerging nationalist leaders in those countries to proclaim
their independence in early 1945; on the other hand, Japan was itself an
imperialist power. It began to station troops in French Indochina in
1940 after signing a treaty with the Vichy French government (the
Nazi-collaborationist regime) to allow Japanese troops to move freely in
Indochina while the French colonial administration remained in power.
END OF WW2
When the Allies decided at the Potsdam Conference to use British and
Nationalist Chinese troops to accept the Japanese surrender in
Indochina, Japan immediately ordered its commander in Indochina to turn
power over to the newly independent governments in Vietnam, Laos, and
Cambodia. At this critical juncture, Hans Imfeld, a Swiss artillery
officer acting on behalf of the Free French, arrived in Laos and went to
see the king. He persuaded the monarch to repudiate his declaration of
independence and to proclaim that the French protectorate over Laos was
still in effect. The king's proclamation infuriated Prince Phetsarath,
who had hoped the king would unify all of Laos - including the territory
in southern Laos outside the kingdom of Luang Prabang - under the king's
authority.
COMMITTEE FOR INDEPENDENT LAOS
Soon thereafter, Prince Phetsarath's younger half-brother, Prince
Souphanouvong, who had been working as an engincer in Vietnam, returned
to Laos and became president of the Committee for Independent Laos
(Khana Lao Issara), which had been founded by a group of nationalists.
Phetsarath was honorary president and Oun Sananikone (scion of another
Laotian aristocratic family), vice president. They intended to create an
army, with Souphanouvong as the commander, and to name their government
the Lao Issara. The king, however, refused to endorse the Lao Issara,
whereupon the provisional people's assembly established by the Lao
Issara voted to depose him.
FRENCH RE-OCCUPATION
In early 1946, as French forces marched northward to retake all of Laos,
Prince Phetsarath, in a conciliatory gesture, offered to reinstate the
king as a constitutional monarch. The king accepted this offer in April,
just one day before French forces reoccupied Vientiane. As the French
entered the city, the Lao Issara leaders fled across the river to
Thailand, where they soon set up a government-in-exile in Bangkok.
LAO NATIONALISTS : PATHET LAO
In Bangkok, meanwhile, the key members of the Lao Issara
government-in-exile fell to quarreling among themselves. Many of them
especially did not like Prince Souphanouvong's close relationship with
the Viet Minh. In 1949, unable to resolve the differences among its
members, the Lao Issara dissolved itself. Some of its leaders returned
to Laos. Souphanouvong also left Bangkok and took his guerrilla forces
to Ho Chi Minh's headquarters in northern Vietnam. At a congress in
August 1950 (attended by the Hmong leader Faydang Lobliayao),
Souphanouvong's group transformed itself into a resistance movement
called the Pathet Lao.
VIETNAMESE NATIONALISTS : VIET MINH
In contrast to the Lao Issara who fled to Thailand when France reimposed
its rule over Laos, the Viet Minh in neighboring Vietnam waged a
ferocious war, called the First Indochina War, against their former
colonial masters. This war began in March 1946, when the French
bombarded the port of Haiphong in northern Vietnam and forced Ho Chi
Minh's newly established government to evacuate to the countryside. Over
the next eight years, the Viet Minh, under their brilliant strategist,
General Vo Nguyen Giap, fought a bitter guerrilla war against the
French.
FIRST INDOCHINA WAR
Though the First Indochina War was fought primarily on Vietnamese soil,
some battles took place in Laos. Viet Minh forces, usually in
coordination with Pathet Lao guerrillas, marched into Laos to divert
French troops from the fighting in Vietnam, as well as to secure
territory in Laos itself. In 1953 four Viet Minh divisions, numbering
some forty thousand men, invaded Houa Phan Province (also called Sam
Neua Province), where the Pathet Lao had set up its headquarters. The
Vietnamese also attacked Thakkek in the southern panhandle of Laos. The
following year, Viet Minh forces thrust toward the royal capital at
Luang Prabang and the administrative capital at Vientiane, striking fear
into the hearts of the French and lowland Lao troops. The Pathet Lao
supplied the Viet Minh with guides, provisions, and intelligence
reports. The French, for their part, organized the Hmong followers of
Touby Lyfong into partisan guerrilla units called the Meo Maquis to aid
their own efforts. Partly to reduce the number of fronts on which they
had to fight, and partly in response to American political pressure, the
French granted Laos full independence in October 1953.
FRENCH DEFEAT
Their defeat on May 8, 1954, forced France to withdraw from Vietnam,
ending their more than eighty years of colonial rule.
1954 GENEVA CONFERENCE
The 1954 Geneva Conference, convened to work out the political
settlements for both the Korean War (1950-53) and the First Indochina
War, divided Vietnam supposedly temporarily in two at the 17th parallel,
pending nationwide elections scheduled for July 1955. The Communist Viet
Minh gained control over North Vietnam, while an anti-Communist regime
aligned with the Unitcd States and the Western allies ruled South
Vietnam. Cambodia, which had received its independence the year before,
as had Laos, remained intact as a single entity. Laos was not divided
per se, but the Pathet Lao were allowed to "regroup" their forces in the
two provinces already under their control - Phong Saly and Houa Phan
(also called Sam Neua Province).
US INVOLVEMENT
One of the least known facts about the First Indochina War is that by
the time it ended, the United States was paying almost 80 percent of
French war costs. Policymakers felt that the United States should make
vigorous efforts to "contain" Communism wherever it seemed to be
spreading. Were it not for this containment policy - a cornerstone of
U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War - it is doubtful that Americans
would have become involved in the affairs of Laos, a country in which
the United States had little interest.
DOMINO THEORY
Both the State Department and the Pentagon believed the best way to
prevent the spread of Communism into Laos was to build up the RLA.
Accordingly, the United States agreed to pay all the salaries of the
troops and officers in that army. No one in the United States had an
accurate idea of how many men were actually in the RLA, however, because
the Laotians insisted that they be allowed to exercise full control over
military pay. Americans were willing to close their eyes to abuses in
this military aid program and supported the RLA at the level that its
commanders requested, because the occasional forays made by Pathet Lao
guerrillas into the territory under RLG control reminded them of the
ever-present dangers of Communism.
1ST COALITION GOVERNMENT
Prince Souvanna Phouma - the brother of Prince Phetsarath and the
half-brother of Prince Souphanouvong - had emerged as the key political
figure in Laos after 1954. A genuine neutralist, Souvanna tried
patiently between 1954 and 1957 - through the rise and fall of several
cabinets, including some headed by himself - to put together a coalition
government that would include pro-American rightists, nonaligned
centrists, and pro-Communist leftists.
PEACE
Souvanna finally succeeded in forming a coalition government in November
1957. The Pathet Lao returned the two northeastern provinces set aside
for them by the Geneva accords to the central government, while
Souphanouvong joined the new government as minister of planning and
reconstruction. Another Pathet Lao leader, Phoumi Vongvichit, became the
minister of religion and fine arts. A cease-fire ended the sporadic
fighting between RLA and Pathet Lao troops. At that time, the latter
numbered approximately six thousand. A clause in the agreement that led
to the coalition government stipulated that fifteen hundred of the
Pathet Lao soldiers would be integrated into the RLA, while the rest
would be discharged and returned to civilian life. The agreement also
provided for a supplementary election in May 1958 to fill twenty-one new
scats in the National Assembly.
ELECTIONS
The United States was unhappy with this new coalition government -
called the Government of National Union - because its composition
legitimized the Pathet Lao's existence. Key American decision makers in
Laos increasingly felt that the only government that would be acceptable
to them was, not a neutralist one, but one that was strongly
pro-American. In the months preceding the May 1958 election, U.S.
personnel in Laos launched Operation Booster Shot, a campaign to win the
hearts and minds of the Laotian electorate, so that they would vote for
the non-Communist candidates. The United States spent more than $3
million on a wide variety of village assistance and community
development projects. Despite this expensive effort, the results of the
election shocked American officials. Instead of the rightist candidates
emerging victorious, the predominant party was the Neo Lao Haksat - the
popular front that the Pathet Lao had established in 1956 to field
political candidates. Its candidates won nine seats, while its ally, the
Santiphab (Peace Party), won four out of the total twenty-one.
Souphanouvong received the largest number of votes among all the
candidates who ran.
US INTERFERENCE
The Pentagon, the State Department, and the CIA all decided that
something had to be done to reverse this political swing to the left in
Laos. On the pretext that corruption was rampant in the U. S. aid
program, the United States cut off aid to Souvanna's government in June.
Since the amount of U. S. aid far exceeded the country's national
budget, the withdrawal of aid created a grave economic crisis. Souvanna
lost a vote of confidence and resigned in July 1958, bringing to an end
to the neutralist coalition he had worked so hard to craft.
PHOUMI'S COUP
Phoumi Nosavan, the USA's protege, who had risen to the rank of general,
marched into Vientiane with his forces in late December 1959 and
occupied key government buildings. Phoumi's coup was legitimated by
rigged elections the following April. CIA agents aided Phoumi in this
effort: they were seen distributing bags of money to village headmen
just before the elections.
KONG LE'S COUP
Phoumi Nosavan did not have long to savor his triumph, however. In
August 1960, a young paratrooper captain named Kong Le. who had received
training at the Ranger School set up by the United States in the
Philippines, staged his own coup. He demanded that the country return to
a policy of genuine neutrality, that all foreign military bases be
abolished, that Laos accept aid from all countries without strings
attached, and that corruption within the government be eliminated. To
preserve the peace, the king brought Souvanna Phouma back as prime
minister. Kong Le handed over the administrative functions that he had
assumed to Souvanna, though his troops remained in Vientiane to patrol
and defend the city. To mollify Phoumi Nosavan, the king asked him to
become the deputy prime minister as well as minister of the interior.
But Phoumi Nosavan did not go to Vientiane to assume these posts.
Instead, after consulting his uncle, the prime minister of Thailand, he
remained in Savannakhet, his power base in southern Laos. There, he
formed a Counter Coup d'etat Committee. The CIA began chartering planes
from Air America, a private airline, to supply his troops.
PHOUMI TAKES VIENTIANE
when General Phoumi's forces began marching toward Vientiane and the
commander of the Vientiane Military Region rebelled against Souvanna,
Souvanna and some of his ministers fled to Phnom Penh, the capital of
neighboring Cambodia.
KONG LE AIDS PATHET LAO
One of Souvanna's remaining ministers flew to Hanoi, where he negotiated
with the Russians to airlift supplies to Kong Le's troops if the latter
would form an alliance with the Pathet Lao in a common fight against
General Phoumi's forces. Kong Le's troops withdrew from Vientiane
several days later, drove Phoumi's forces out of the Plain of Jars,
established their own headquarters there, and linked up with Pathet Lao
forces. Between December 15, 1960 and January 2, I961, the Russians flew
over a hundred and eighty missions over the Plain of Jars, dropping
food, weapons, and ammunition to the now-combined forces of Kong Le and
the Pathet Lao. At this point, North Vietnamese troops entered Laos in
large numbers and, together with the Pathet Lao, occupied portions of
six provinces in northern Laos.
2ND COALITION GOVERNMENT
After more than a year of painstaking and complicated discussions, the
three Laotian factions agreed in June 1962 to set up the Provisional
Government of National Union, to be made up of seven neutralists under
Souvanna Phouma, four leftists from the Pathet Lao, four rightists from
General Phoumi Nosavan's group, and four so-called rightwing neutralists
- men who had remained in the Vientiane government but who had not shown
any political commitment to General Phoumi. Souvanna was to become prime
minister, while Souphanouvong and Boun Oum were both to become deputy
prime ministers. On July 23, 1962, the international participants signed
the Geneva Protocol, a comprehensive statement to guarantee the
neutrality of Laos.
KONG LE AIDS PHOUMI
In February 1963 men under a colonel who had once been loyal to Kong Le
but who had quarreled with him and joined the Pathet Lao killed one of
Kong Le's officers. This dissident neutralist group, with the support of
the Pathet Lao, fought against Kong Le's forces sporadically throughout
the spring and summer of 1963. The dissident neutralists succeeded in
ousting Kong Le's men from Khang Khay, Xieng Khouang town, and an
airstrip on the Plain of Jars. As Kong Le retreated, he changed sides
and joined forces with General Phoumi Nosavan's men, which enabled his
troops to gain access to American weapons.
WAR
In April 1963 after a leftist minister friendly to the Pathet Lao was
assassinated in Vientiane, Souphanouvong and another Pathet Lao minister
left the capital for Khang Khay, by then the Pathet Lao head quarters.
After two more neutralists were assassinated later that year, virtually
all of Souphanouvong's followers left Vientiane, thereby bringing to an
end the second coalition government. As the United States began
supplying Kong Le's army, the North Vietnamese stepped up their support
of the Pathet Lao.
US BOMBING
The bombing of Laos was done in secret. It began in May 1964 when
American reconnaissance planes started flying over southern Laos and the
Plain of Jars. Souvanna Phouma gave verbal permission to the American
ambassador for these flights. But as Communist antiaircraft units shot
at and occasionally shot down the reconnaissance planes, fighter escorts
began flying with them. At the same time, the United States began
supplying bomb fuses to the Laotian Air Force to make operational the
bombs that had been delivered to the Laotian government earlier. But
since the number of qualified Laotian pilots was very small, Air America
pilots as well as Thai pilots began manning some of the Laotian planes.
The use of Thai pilots became public knowledge when, in June 1964, they
bombed the Pathet Lao headquarters at Khang Khay and destroyed the
Communist Chinese mission there. Souvanna Phouma, greatly embarrassed by
this incident, tried to stop the air strikes, but the United States
prevailed upon him to allow them to continue. The United States called
all its air operations in Laos over the next six years "reconnaissance
flights," even though over two million tons of bombs were dropped on
Laos in the 1960s - more than the total tonnage dropped during World War
II. Despite official denials, countless numbers of civilians were killed
and entire villages wiped out during this unpublicized war.
3RD COALITION GOVERNMENT
Influenced by developments in Vietnam, the Pathet Lao decided the time
had come to consider anew a political settlement in Laos and offered to
negotiate with Souvanna Phouma's government without preconditions.
Souvanna was happy to accept the offer and talks began in Vientiane in
October 1972. Less than a month after the Paris Peace Agreements were
signed by the United States and North Vietnam, the Laotian factions
signed their own Agreement on the Restoration of Peace and
Reconciliation in Laos on February 21, 1973. It specified that all
foreign military forces were to be withdrawn within sixty days and
provided for the formation of another Provisional Government of National
Union, with an equal number of Communists and non-Communists, as well as
a National Political Consultative Council (NPCC), a parliamentary body.
When this third coalition government came into being in April 1974,
Souvanna Phouma became its prime minister, while Souphanouvong became
chairman of the NPCC.
PDR : 1975
For several months, the coalition government functioned smoothly and the
cease-fire held. RLA and Pathet Lao forces jointly controlled Vientiane
and Luang Prabang. Unfortunately, Souvanna Phouma suffered a heart
attack in July 1974 and left for France to recuperate. During that
interregnum, a series of strikes by students and workers disrupted the
peace, and fighting broke out again between Pathet Lao and Vang Pao's
troops in April 1975.
The coalition government and the NPCC were dissolved, and the Lao
People's Democratic Republic was proclaimed on December 2, 1975.
more history:
egypt
iraq
india
see also: ramayana
europe
see also: dark ages
america
see also: kubark
see also: psyops
vietnam
see also: mai lai
corporate welfare
drug war