Laos, Future Prospects and Their Limitations

Abstract

This article is not an attempt to assess the contemporary ( 1965) situation in Laos or to deal in detail with the politics of the immediate past.* Our task is, rather, to outline briefly some of the most crucial factors which will play an important role in shaping the country's future. Laos is a small, land-locked country sandwiched in between three large states: China, Vietnam, and Thailand. Each of these countries contain significant numbers of people ethnically similar to the people of Laos. The dominant group in the Kingdom of Laos, the valley Lao, are for all practical purposes very similar in both language and culture to the Northeastern and Northern Thai. The Mekong River, although an international boundary, promotes rather than impedes contacts between the Lao and Northeast Thai. Although in the North and East the terrain is mountainous, the same kinds of people, the tribal Tai, Meo and Yao, are found in both China and Vietnam. Thus, boundaries in this area are purely political; in no sense do they constitute ethnic or cultural frontiers. On the contrary, until recent times people traded and migrated freely across them. The significant point can be made that there is no ethnic group found in Laos which does not occur in larger numbers in one of the neighboring states. Prior to the coming of the French in the latter part of the 19th century, Laos had been split into the petty princedoms of Champassak, Vientiane, Xieng Khouang, and Luang Prabang, although at times they had been united. During the 18th and 19th centuries, frequent invasions by Annam, by groups such as the Ho from China and by the Siamese, contributed to many divisions. The Lao princedoms paid tribute to such foreign elements as these. Indeed, at the time of the French expansion, the Thai had recently decimated Vientiane, and much of its population had crossed over into Siam. The only princedom surviving was that of Luang Prabang where the French were welcomed as protectors who would stand between the Lao and the Siamese, and to a lesser extent fend off menaces from the North. French control of Vietnam assured peace in the East. This attitude of regarding the colonizers as protectors is still found among the older generation of Lao intellectuals who continue to consider themselves, children of the French peace. It is only now dying off. Not a few of the offspring of the Lao elite have intermarried with the French and a number of prominent Lao officials continue to look to France as a kind of