Laos

E

Political Parties

The ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP), known until 1972 as the Lao People’s Party, came to power in 1975. It is the only legal political party in Laos. The party president presides over the main organ of political power, the Political Bureau (or Politburo). The Central Committee, charged with leading the party between party congresses, elects the Politburo. Though nominally a Communist party founded on the principles of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the LPRP is more concerned with maintaining a monopoly of political power than with ideology. In 1990 the LPRP-dominated government stamped out attempts to establish an opposition party by giving ringleaders long prison sentences.

F

Defense

In 1976 the guerrilla forces that overthrew the royal Lao regime became the Lao People’s Army (LPA). In 2004 the LPA had 25,600 members, equipped with aging tanks and artillery. The air force numbered 3,500 men and also was equipped with aging equipment, including MiG-21 fighters, helicopters, and transport planes. A tiny 600-strong navy patrols the Mekong River. Lao men must serve in the military for a minimum of 18 months.

G

International Organizations

Laos became a member of the United Nations (UN) in December 1955. It joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in July 1997.

VIII

History

The first inhabitants of Laos were early Stone Age people, who left the remains of their polished axes. By the middle of the 1st millennium bc, people on the Plain of Jars who probably spoke an Austro-Asiatic language created a flourishing Bronze Age culture. This culture was characterized by huge stone funerary urns (the 'jars' after which the plateau is named) and by bronze tools and weapons. Eventually its people learned to use iron smelted from ores mined nearby. Historians believe that Laos’s earliest inhabitants were the ancestors of the Lao Thoeng, who today live on Laos’s mountain slopes.

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By the early centuries ad, small kingdoms were becoming established in mainland Southeast Asia. One of these, the kingdom of Zhenla, arose in the 7th century and extended from northern Cambodia into southern Laos. Later, small kingdoms were established in the regions of Vientiane and Louangphrabang and elsewhere on the middle Mekong.

In the meantime, the Lao and other Tai peoples had been slowly moving south and southeast from southern China and northwestern Vietnam, cultivating upland valleys and pushing out the Lao Thoeng. Lao myths tell of this expansion, which reached Louangphrabang perhaps as early as the 10th century. There the Lao established their first small principality in what is now Lao territory. In the 12th century this principality was absorbed into the Khmer (Cambodian) Empire (see Khmer Kingdoms), and in the late 13th century it came under the control of the Mongol Empire. During this turmoil, Tai peoples carved out their first substantial kingdoms, first in central and northern Thailand and then in Laos.

A

The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang

A Lao prince named Fa Ngum founded the kingdom of Lan Xang in the mid-14th century. The name Lan Xang, which means “a million elephants,” was chosen to inspire fear among lesser rulers at a time when elephants were the principal engines of war. Fa Ngum had been exiled by his grandfather, the ruler of the principality of Louangphrabang under the Mongols, and raised in the Cambodian capital of Ângkôr. In 1351 he was given a Khmer princess in marriage and a Khmer army with which to reconquer his rightful heritage. On his line of march, Fa Ngum drew together all the small Lao principalities (meuang) to form a powerful kingdom that could hold its own against the surrounding powers of Burma (now Myanmar), Vietnam, the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya, and Cambodia.

Fa Ngum set about organizing and strengthening his kingdom. Theravada Buddhism, which was already known to the Lao, gained royal support from Fa Ngum’s Khmer queen, though animist cults worshiping local spirits (phi) were still strong. Buddhism legitimized kingship by characterizing the monarch as one having great merit, while kings reciprocated by endowing Buddhist monasteries. But Fa Ngum became too autocratic and demanding, and was deposed in favor of his son.

In the 15th century Lan Xang suffered from internal weakness, and in 1478 a Vietnamese army invaded Lan Xang, seizing and sacking the capital before being driven out. The kingdom was restored by King Vixun, a powerful and capable ruler. Vixun brought a golden Buddha image known as the Phra Bang to his capital city. The king’s Buddha became a symbol of the Lao state, and his capital came to be called Louangphrabang, or Great Phra Bang, in honor of the Buddha. Vixun was a great patron of the arts and of Buddhism. Poetry, literature, music, and dance flourished during his reign.

Briefly in the mid-16th century, the kingdom of Lan Na, centered on Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, was absorbed into Lan Xang. But the Lan Xang king at the time, Xetthathirat, was renowned more for his valiant defiance of the Burmese than for ruling Lan Na. Twice during Xetthathirat’s reign, Burmese armies ravaged Lan Xang, and twice they were driven from Lao soil. Xetthathirat moved the Lao capital south to Vientiane, a site more defensible than Louangphrabang and more central, for by this time Lao settlers had migrated into southern Laos (Champasak) and across the Khorat Plateau into what is now northeastern Thailand. Xetthathirat beautified his capital by building the great That Luang stupa and a temple to house his own favorite Buddha image, the Emerald Buddha. At the height of his power, however, Xetthathirat went too far in his military ambitions. He invaded Cambodia and disappeared when his army was routed. In the ensuing anarchy, Laos fell to the Burmese.

The Lao kingdom recovered in the 17th century under the great king Surinyavongsa. Early in his long reign, Europeans first visited Laos. A Dutch merchant and a Jesuit missionary both reached Vientiane and left admiring descriptions of the kingdom. Both Europeans were amazed at the wealth of the capital and the number of its monks, for Vientiane was a center of Buddhist studies. When Surinyavongsa died in 1695 without an heir, Lan Xang split into three separate kingdoms: Louangphrabang, Vientiane, and Champasak, all of which fell under the suzerainty of the kingdom of Ayutthaya (also known as Siam, later Thailand) during the next century.

In 1767 Burmese armies invaded Ayutthaya and seized and sacked the capital. The Siamese people rallied under King Phraya Taksin, who drove out the Burmese. Taksin was determined to increase the wealth and power of Siam, and to enforce his will over the Lao kingdoms. In 1778 he seized Vientiane and carried off the Emerald Buddha. Both Louangphrabang and Champasak agreed to pay Taksin tribute. When the last king of Vientiane, Chau Anu, tried to reassert his independence in 1827, Thai armies destroyed Vientiane.

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