Laos History

Lao PDR’s history is full of foreign oppression because of its location. Lao PDR is a landlocked country with China and Myanmar to the north, Thailand to the west, Cambodia to the south, and Vietnam to the east.

Lao PDR's Neighbouring Countries

Laos became the rope in a tug-of-war between the U.S. and its allies and China, the USSR, and their allies.

Laos’s history begins in the 7th century when the Chinese pushed the Tai people into what is today northern Thailand, northern Laos, eastern Myanmar, and northern Vietnam. The Tai people are not Thai; Thai people are from Thailand, and the Tai people are from an ethnic group from the Yunnan province in China. The Tai people that migrated into Laos became known as “lowland Lao” or in Laos, Lao Loum.

Lao Loum People

As the largest ethnic group in Laos, the lowland Lao were economically and culturally dominant. The second largest ethnic group in Laos are the Mon-Khmer.

Mon-Khmer People

These people lived in the upland Laos before the Tai migration. Therefore, they are now called Lao Theung meaning the upland Lao, but the Tai people called them Kha or slaves.

Lao Theung People

Among the smallest ethnic groups are the Tibeto-Burman people that migrated into the northern mountains of Laos in the early 18th and 19th centuries. Now, these people are called Lao Soung.

Lao Soung People

These people consist of the Yao, Kamut, Man, and Hmong tribes. The lowland Lao rudely referred to the Hmong people as Meo, which means savage. Even before the Tibeto-Burman people migrated into Laos, there is evidence of a civilization that dates back many centuries before Christ. This civilization was located in an area now named “The Plain of Jars” because of the huge jars the people built to store the ashes of the dead.

Plain of Jars

Until the 13th century, all these tribes ruled on their own, planted their own crops, and traded within themselves. It was not until the 13th century when the Tai people began to organize the tribal communities into states under one king. Such states are Chiang Mai and Sukhotai (which at the time belonged to Laos until the 19th century) and Luang Prabang. One such king was Fa Ngum.

Fa Ngum Statue

Fa Ngum was born in 1316. He was raised in the royal court of the kingdom of Angkor. Later, he married a Khmer princess and became a Buddhist. In 1353, with the Khmer forces at his back, he united all the states into one kingdom called Lan Xang, which means “a million elephants.”

Lan Xang

The capital of Lan Xang became Luang Prabang.

As the Angkor kingdom began to lose power Lan Xang began to grow. Vientiane became the capital of Lan Xang. The peak of the Lan Xang Empire was in 1637 under the King Souligna Vongsa, but when he died in 1694 without a successor, fights over the throne broke out and Vietnam and Thailand became involved.

King Souligna Vongsa

This led to fall of the kingdom of a million elephants. The Vietnamese and the Thai took this chance to take little parts of Laos for themselves. The once unified Lan Xang broke up again into small kingdoms. These small kingdoms aided by Vietnam and Thailand fought against each other. This conflict continued for many decades until the French takeover of Indochina in 1893.

When the French took over Cambodia and Vietnam, they were very interested in Laos. They believed that the Mekong River was a major way to trade with China, but they were wrong. In 1893, Thailand signed a treaty which forced them to give up all Lao territory east of the Mekong. Soon, the French began to realize that they would not gain anything from Laos. The only main produce that came from Laos was tin, which was mined by Vietnamese workers, and opium, which was grown by the Hmong tribe. In 1940, the Japanese occupation in Laos put pressure on the French. Seeing this, the Thais, with the support of the Japanese, took control of the Lao provinces west of the Mekong. The French, wanting to win more support from the people, began to build schools, encourage more tradition music, dance, and dress, and started the first Lao newspaper.

By May of 1946, the French had recaptured Laos, but Laos was in a state of turmoil. The newly formed Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) supported the anti-French movement in Laos. This support led to the formation of Pathet Lao. The Pathet Lao was a communist organization that wanted to unite Laos. By 1954, the Pathet Lao forces controlled large parts of northern Laos, including the Plain of Jars. In May of 1954, the Geneva conference was held. The conference said that the Pathet Lao would combine with the Royal Lao government in order to pacify Lao. After the Geneva Conference, the French withdrew from Indochina, but the attempt to pacify Lao would not happen quickly. Soon, the United States began to get involved. The U.S. backed the Royal Lao government while the DRV backed the Pathet Lao. Due to the Vietnamese and U.S. conflicts there was little chance that Lao would stay out of the war, especially since the Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through much of Lao.

Starting in 1959, the CIA began to train and give aid to the Hmong tribes with Vang Pao as their leader. The CIA paid Vang Pao to train more than 10,000 Hmong soldiers. They sent this mercenary army to fight the Pathet Lao. By 1963, more than 20,000 Hmong soldiers were armed, and Air America, which had been bought by the CIA, ceased delivering passengers and humanitarian aid; its main purpose was to drop bombs. From 1964 to 1975, the CIA dropped more than two million tons of bombs killing more than one third of the Laotian population. The CIA flew 580,000 bombing missions into Laos and dropped more bombs in the Secret War than the bombs they dropped in Japan and Germany combined during WWII. When all the soldiers in the Hmong army were almost wiped out, the CIA began to send teenagers and children to fight in the war.

During the Vietnam war, the U.S. sprayed Agent Orange on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Unfortunately, this trail ran through part of Laos so many people were gravely affected. One of these people was the mother of our tour guide in Luang Prabang. He told us that his mother lived near the Ho Chi Minh trail, and therefore, she breathed in Agent Orange and ate many plants that were sprayed with it. As a result, she died from the poisoning Agent Orange caused to her body. She was one of the many victims of Agent Orange.

When the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam, they also withdrew from Laos. In 1975, Laos had its independence. From then on, it became communist. Laos’s official name is Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). They left the Hmong tribe to deal with all it’s post-war issues, and they left Laos marked with exploding memories of the war. These memories were bombies. The type of bombs that the CIA dropped in Laos was a type of bomb called a cluster bomb. This bomb opened in the air releasing over 600 bombies. When these bombies hit the ground, they exploded:

The explosion sent shrapnel flying for the distance of two kilometers. Some bombies did not explode when they hit the ground.

Many decades after, people are still discovering these bombies, and most of the time too late. To learn about this sad war in Lao PDR, I have watched many documentaries. These are my favorites: Documentary About Bombies in Laos and Documentary About The Secret War in Laos.