The Lao state dates only from 1945. The idea of a separate Lao nationality was formed during the 19th century, when western ideas of national identity reached South-East Asia, and when the Lao-speaking peoples were being squeezed between two expansionist powers, Siam (Thailand) and Vietnam. The current borders of Laos were created by France in 1893 and 1904. Today the official history of Laos is traced back to the Kingdom of Lān Xāng, which was founded in 1353. But in reality the Lao share a common history with the Siamese and other people of the Tai language group, and Lān Xāng was only one of a number of Tai kingdoms in a region which had a broad linguistic and cultural unity before the arrival of outside powers.
• 1 Early history
• 2 The Kingdom of Lān Xāng
• 3 Siamese domination
• 4 The creation of Laos
• 5 French Laos
• 6 The Crisis of World War II
• 7 Sources
• 8 External links
• 9 See also
The Tai (also spelled Dai) are a linguistic group originating in southern China, which includes the Lao, the Siamese, the people of the Shan region of north-eastern Burma, the Zhuang people of Guangxi Province in China and the Tho and Nung people of northern Vietnam. Under pressure from the expansion of the Han Chinese, the Tai began to migrate into South-East Asia during the first millennium AD. They displaced earlier peoples (including the iron age culture who made the great stone jars from which the Plain of Jars in central Laos takes its name). The Mekong River, which flows through what is now Laos, was a major migration route, but the strength of the Khmer Empire (Cambodia) prevented the Tai from dominating the Mekong Valley. Instead the main area of Tai settlement was further south in the Chao Phraya Valley, where they formed a series of kingdoms ancestral to modern Siam and Thailand.
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During the first millennium AD the Tai peoples were loosely organised in small entities known as muang or mandalas. They were heavily influenced by the more advanced cultures around them: the Khmer to the south-east, and the Hindu cultures of India to the west. Most of the Tai were converted to a form of Hinduism, traces of which can still be seen in Lao religious practice today. Between the 6th and 9th centuries AD Buddhism was introduced into the Tai-speaking lands, probably via Burma, and became the dominant religion. But the Lao retain many animist religious practices from the pre-Buddhist era.
As the Tai peoples became established, they divided into a number of linguistic sub-groups. These included the Tai-Lao, who during the 11th and 12th centuries AD spread along the middle Mekong Valley and across the Khōrāt Plateau (now the Isan region of north-eastern Thailand). Their advance down the Mekong was blocked at Champāsak by the Khmers, who built the great temple at Wat Phū. The Lao in turn divided into further groups, based on where they lived in relation to the river. These were the Lao-Lum (Lao of the valley floor), the Lao-Thoeng (Lao of the mountain slopes) and the Lao-Sūng (Lao of the mountain tops). This latter group included various linguistic minorities only distantly related to the Tai. The Lao-Lum, having the best farming land and the best access to river transport, became the wealthiest of the Tai-Lao peoples. These divisions have haunted Lao history and still exist today, with many Lao-Thoeng and Lao-Sūng people having only a tenuous loyalty to a Lao-Lum dominated state.
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The rise and fall of various early Lao states is now recorded only in myth. The earliest historically identifiable Lao leader is Khun Lô, who probably conquered the Luang Phrabāng area from non-Tai people in the 12th century. Because the Mekong is divided into three distinct navigable sections by rapids, between Luang Phrabāng and Viang Chan (Vientiane) and between Viang Chan and Savannakhēt, these three to wns became the centres of three distinct Lao-Lum mandalas. This pattern was disrupted by the Mongol invasion of 1253, when part of Kublai Khan's army advanced down the Mekong to attack the Khmers. In the wake of the Mongol withdrawal a new kingdom were founded by the Siamese at Sukhothai, which was later succeeded by a more powerful Siamese state with its capital at Ayutthaya (founded in 1351). The kingdom of Lān Nā, based at Chiang Mai and containing both Siamese and Lao elements, was also founded at this time.
In response, the Tai-Lao rulers of Luang Phrabāng (which was then called Xiang Dong Xiang Thong) formed a new state which, while still nominally subject to the Mongol rulers of China, became the leading force among the Lao peoples. From about 1271 this state was ruled by a dynasty called the Phrayā. In about 1350 a prince of this dynasty, Fā Ngum, fled the court with his father after a dispute and sought refuge with the Khmers at Angkor, where he married a royal princess. In 1353 he returned at the head of an army (presumably with Khmer aid), captured Xiang Dong Xiang Thong and founded a new Lao state which covered the whole Lao-speaking Mekong valley. This was Lān Xāng, the Kingdom of a Million Elephants.
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Over the next decade Fā Ngum sought to bring all the Lao under his authority. He conquered most of the Khōrāt Plateau, as well as territory in what is now north-western Vietnam. The Khmer court considered him to be a Khmer vassal, but he succeeded in establishing Lao rule over Champāsak and perhaps as far south as Stung Treng in what is now northern Cambodia. His wife is credited with introducing Theravada Buddhism, which had been brought to Siam by missionaries from Sri Lanka in the 13th century, and from there spread to the Khmer Empire. In 1368, however, Fā Ngum's wife died, and shortly after the Mongol dynasty in China was overthrown. These events broke two key relationships sustaining Fā Ngum's power, and in 1373 he was overthrown as a result of a court intrigue and replaced by his son Unheuan, who took the name Sāmsaentai ("Lord of 300,000 Tai").
Lān Xāng was not a state in the modern sense of the word. The king at Xiang Dong Xiang Thong directly ruled and taxed only the town and surrounding area. The lords
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