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About
Laos Tours
History of Laos
 Laos
traces its history to the kingdom of
Lan Xang, founded in the 15th
century by Fa Ngum, himself
descended from a long line of Lao
kings, tracking back to Khoun Boulom.
Lan-Xang prospered until the 18th
century, when the kingdom was
divided into three principalities,
which eventually came under Siamese
suzerainty. In the 19th century,
Luang Prabang was incorporated into
the 'Protectorate' of French
Indochina, and shortly thereafter,
the Kingdom of Champasak and the
territory of Vientiane were also
added to the protectorate. Under the
French, Vientiane once again became
the capital of a unified Lao state.
Following a brief Japanese
occupation during World War II, the
country declared its independence in
1945, but the French under Charles
de Gaulle re-asserted their control
and only in 1950 was Laos granted
semi-autonomy as an "associated
state" within the French Union.
Moreover, the French remained in de
facto control until 1954, when Laos
gained full independence as a
constitutional monarchy. Under a
special exemption to the Geneva
Convention, a French military
training mission continued to
support the Royal Laos Army. In
1955, the U.S. Department of Defense
created a special Programs
Evaluation Office to replace French
support of the Royal Lao Army
against the communist Pathet Lao as
part of the U.S. containment policy.
Laos was dragged into the Vietnam
War and the eastern parts of the
country were invaded and occupied by
the North Vietnamese Army (NVA),
which used Laotian territory as a
staging ground and supply route for
its war against the South. In
response, the United States
initiated a bombing campaign against
the North Vietnamese, supported
regular and irregular anticommunist
forces in Laos and supported a South
Vietnamese invasion of Laos. The
result of these actions were a
series of coups d'état and,
ultimately, the Laotian Civil War
between the Royal Laotian government
and the communist Pathet Lao.
 In
the Civil War the NVA, with its
heavy artillery and tanks, was the
real power behind the Pathet Lao
insurgency. In 1968, the North
Vietnamese Army launched a
multi-division attack against the
Royal Lao Army. The attack resulted
in the army largely demobilizing and
leaving the conflict to irregular
forces raised by the United States
and Thailand. The attack resulted in
many people losing their lives.
Massive aerial bombardment was
carried out by the United States
(The Guardian reported, on Wednesday
3rd December, 2008, that Laos was
hit by an average of one B-52
bomb-load every eight minutes, 24
hours a day, between 1964 and 1973.
US bombers dropped more ordnance on
Laos in this period than was dropped
during the whole of the Second World
War. Of the 260m "bombies" that
rained down, particularly on Xieng
Khouang province, 80m failed to
explode, leaving a deadly legacy
Pha That Luang in Vientiane, the
national symbol of LaosIn 1975, the
communist Pathet Lao, backed by the
Soviet Union and the North
Vietnamese Army, overthrew the
royalist government, forcing King
Savang Vatthana to abdicate on 2
December 1975. He later died in
captivity.
After taking control of the country,
Pathet Lao's government renamed the
country as the "Lao People's
Democratic Republic" and signed
agreements giving Vietnam the right
to station armed forces and to
appoint advisers to assist in
overseeing the country. Laos was
ordered in the late 1970s by Vietnam
to end relations with the People's
Republic of China which cut the
country off from trade with any
country but Vietnam. Control by
Vietnam and socialisation were
slowly replaced by a relaxation of
economic restrictions in the 1980s
and admission into ASEAN in 1997.
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