In December, the PGNU was quietly
dismantled over the following months and the Lao People's Revolutionary
Party (LPRP) was declared the ruling party of the LPDR in December.
A ceasefire agreement was reached in
Laos as the USA began negotiating its way out of Vietnam in 1973, (via
the Paris agreements, leaving the country was effectively divided into
PL and non-PL zones, just as it had been in 1954, only this time under
communist control.
From 1964 to 1973, the war in Indochina
escalated. From US air bases established in Thailand, US bombers were
soon trans-secting Eastern and North-Eastern Laos, North Vietnam and
along the Ho Chi Minh Trail on bombing missions. In order to fulfill
their orders to release all bombs, B-52 captains would arbitrarily empty
their bomb bays over civilian areas in Laos when returning from
Vietnamese air strikes;
The neutralist military faction led by
Kong Le In August 1960, seized Vientiane in a coup d'etat. Souvanna
Phoum was recalled from France to serve as prime minister. Rightist
General Phoumi Novasan agreed at first to support the new government and
to allow LPF participation.
The participants at the Geneva
Conference had finally reached a settlement by 1957. LPF and the Royal
Lao Government (RLG) agreed to a coalition government (under the RLG’s
Prince Souvanna Phouma)) known as the Government of National Union.Two
LPF ministers and their deputies were admitted at the national level.
In 1948, Prince Souphanouvong went to
Hanoi to enlist support from the Viet Minh for a Lao communist movement.
Kaysone Phomvihane (who later became Secretary-General of the Lao
People's Revolutionary Party and Prime Minister of the LPDR), was at the
same time making headway among tribal minorities in the mountain
districts of Eastern Laos on behalf of Ho Chi Minh's ICP – the
Indochinese Communist Party
Having established protectorates in Tonkin and Annam,
the French, with Siamese consent, opened a consulate at Luang Phrabang.
Soon thereafter, they convinced Laos to apply for protectorate status as
well. It was probably the only feasible choice at the time, though the
monarch Oun Kham has been vilified since for giving up Lao sovereignty.
Upon the death of the heirless Surya Vongsa, a three-way
stuggle for the throne preceded the breakup of Lan Xang. Surya’s
nephew, by the early seventeenth century, controlled the middle Mekong
valley around Vientiane, under the Stewardship of Annam.
In what is today Laos and Northern
Thailand, several small independent Tai and Mon meuangs existed until
the 13th century, when The Tais rebelled against the Khmers, resulting
in a coalition of several meuangs which formed the foundation of the
Sukhothai Kingdom in Northern Thailand.
The Mongols rise to power in China in the 13th century
under Genghis Khan spurred a huge migration of Tai peoples south.
Described by one historian as more of an inundation than a migration,
the advancing Tais gradually displaced or assimilated the indigenous
Austro Burman and Austro Asiatic groups that controlled the area between
Vietnam and Assam in Northwest India.
The Mekong River valley and the Korat Plateau, which
encompass substantial parts of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand, were
inhabited as long as 10.000 years ago. Although data on these
prehistoric cultures is limited, evidence shows that production of
bronze and glazed ceramics began here earlier than elsewhere in the
world.
