1 - Post-war Laos: An Introduction

Summary

I have no direct memories of my father' country. Like thousands of Lao, my parents left in the late 1970s after the Communists took power, and settled in France. For a long time, Laos remained a distant country for me. But it was there that I found myself drawn to the issues of ethnicity and nationalism; like many others, I was fascinated by the country' linguistic and cultural mosaic and its turbulent history. Two initial, broad research aims eventually unfolded: first, how might sentiments of national consciousness be created in a complex society (such as Laos)? And, second, which form of “nation” would develop in a non-Western, post-colonial and multi-ethnic country (such as Laos)? My interest was heightened by Laos’ turbulent history, especially from the late nineteenth century onwards. Laos, like Vietnam and Cambodia, is a former French colony. The country was entangled in the turmoil of the Second World War and the Japanese occupation of the region, which irremediably damaged the “prestige” of French colonial power. Laos was first declared independent in September 1945 (after the surrender of the Japanese and before the return of the French), an arrangement to be replaced less than a year later, in May 1946, with the status of a unified constitutional monarchy within the French Union.

The newly built Lao polity was, however, subsequently destroyed by the impact of the Cold War and the First and Second Indochinese Wars. From the late 1940s to 1975, a civil war tore the country apart along political, ideological and geographical lines. The conflict opposed the Royal Lao Government (RLG) to the Pathet Lao, i.e. the Lao communists. Both sides were heavily dependent on foreign powers: the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (and, to a lesser extent, the People' Republic of China), respectively. The country was split into two zones, as if an imaginary (and fluctuating) line, drawn north to south, divided the eastern and western halves of the country. Broadly speaking, the government controlled areas embraced the plains, mostly inhabited by ethnic Lao, while the communists dominated the eastern and mountainous territories, which were mainly populated by ethnic minorities.