Summary

The Kingdom of Lan Xang (Pāli language: शिसत्तनखनहुत्, transliterated: sri sattana khanahut; literally: one million elephants) was founded in 1354 by Fa Ngum, a prince of Mueang Sua, today's Laotian city of Luang Prabang. The state, which would long dominate the Mekong Valley in northern Indochina, unified for the first time the Lao people, until then divided into several municipalities called muang (in Lao: ເມືອງ), which gravitated within the orbit of powerful neighboring states, chief among them the Khmer Empire.

The Kingdom of Lan Xang came to an end in 1707 when, following bloody civil wars, it split into the Kingdoms of Vientiane and Luang Prabang. In 1713, the Vientiane Kingdom would cede its southern territories to the new Champasak Kingdom.

The sources from which historiographers drew information about the history of the kingdom came from the annals of the ancient states in the region, including those of Lan Xang himself, Lanna, Ayutthaya of Burma and the Khmer Empire, which differed from each other. Lan Xang's annals were translated into other languages and interpreted in different ways, resulting in disputes over the reliability of the historical references. Chief among the criticisms that led to the change of the original text was dictated by the belief that many of the historical events had been omitted or distorted in the original edition for the greater glory of the kingdom. The events and dates related to Lan Xang's history themselves are therefore not fully reliable.

Between the 1st and 5th centuries A.D., the growing influence of the Funan Kingdom spread Hindu civilization to southern Indochina, which was developed in the following centuries by the kingdoms of Chenla, settled in present-day Cambodia, and Champa, located in present-day South Vietnam. The Khmer Empire, which arose in the late 8th century from the ashes of Chenla, spread across much of Indochina and assumed the leading role of Hinduism in the region for 500 years. Starting in the 6th century, the Dvaravati culture also spread, influenced by the emerging Mon people, who converted to Theravada Buddhism and fostered the founding of several principalities in present-day Burma, Thailand and Laos. The Khmers conquered much of the eastern Mon city-states and imposed Hinduism, while Buddhism continued to flourish in the west. From the union of the two cultures came the Mon Khmer language family.

It was in this context that, between the 4th and 8th centuries, the first municipalities were formed in the Mekong Valley, city-states that grew under the influence of the Indochinese kingdoms and the Chinese Empire. In the following centuries, they were subjugated and made vassal states by the Khmer and champa, but maintained a good degree of autonomy by retaining their own rulers.

Migration from southern China to northern Indochina by Tai peoples had begun in the second half of the 1st millennium AD and had become more pronounced after the fall in 1253 of the Kingdom of Dali, whose population was mainly ethnic Tai. Gradually the Tai settled in a wide swath of territory between northeastern India and northern Vietnam and divided into several ethnic subgroups. Among the most important were the Siamese, who in 1238 formed the Kingdom of Sukhothai in present-day Central Thailand, the Tai Yuan, who in 638 formed the Kingdom of Hiran

The Lao group settled on the plains of the Middle Mekong and surrounding areas, where they extended their influence until they took control of the old existing municipalities, which were given the name mueang. In the early 13th century, the mueang of Sua (or Sawa), today's Luang Prabang, succeeded in making itself independent of powerful neighboring states and establishing itself as a kingdom. It would be the dynasty of this city that would unify the Laotian municipalities and people with the formation of the Lan Xang Kingdom, and it would remain on the throne of the various successive kingdoms in Vientiane and Luang Prabang until 1975.

Prince Fa Ngum was born in 1316 in the Laotian kingdom of Mueang Sua, present-day Luang Prabang, a powerful city-state also called Xieng Dong Xieng Thong that had extended its influence over large territories in the Mekong Valley. Removed from the kingdom after birth by the king's advisers, Fa Ngum came to Angkor, the capital of the decadent Khmer Empire, where he was raised at court. He demonstrated intelligence in his studies, and Emperor Lampong Reachea granted him the hand of his daughter, Princess Keo Keng Kagna, and he converted to Theravada Buddhism.

In 1349, the emperor provided Fa Ngum with an army of 10,000 men, at the head of which he marched north to seize the throne of Mueang Sua, which had passed into his uncle's hands. Lampong Reachea's intentions were to make Fa Ngum a powerful ruler and an ally to counter the expansionist aims of the Siamese of the Sukhothai Kingdom, who had conquered several mueangs previously subdued by the Khmers. A series of victories secured Fa Ngum control of important principalities in today's Laos, northwestern Vietnam, and northeastern Thailand and allowed him to significantly swell the ranks of his army. In 1353 he conquered Mueang Sua, becoming its ruler with the title Phragna Fa La Tholany Sri Sattana Khanahut, by which he proclaimed himself a descendant of King Khun Borom, the legendary progenitor of the Tai lineages. According to some of these sources, in the same year the armies of Ramathibodi I, Siamese ruler of the new Kingdom of Ayutthaya, conquered Angkor. Following the victory, Siam had made the Khmers vassals and annexed territories in the western part of the Korat Plateau.

The following year, at the command of 50,000 men, Fa Ngum conquered Vientiane, one of the last Laotian municipalities in the Mekong Valley of which he had no control, where in June 1354 he had himself crowned monarch of the new Kingdom of Lan Xang, literally the "kingdom of a million elephants," the portentous 'war machines' of those times.

In addition to the unification of the Laotian principalities and the power vacuum left by the Khmer decline, Fa Ngum also benefited from the turbulent situation in the neighboring Chinese Empire, whose Yuan dynasty had been showing signs of collapse for several years. At the same time that Fa Ngum asserted himself, China had to loosen its control over the empire's periphery to deal with several natural disasters and harsh internal uprisings. The most serious was that of the Red Turban, which began around 1352 and would end in 1368 with the collapse of the Yuan and the seizure of power by the Ming dynasty.

The capital of Lan Xang was established in Mueang Sua and Theravada Buddhism was declared the state religion. Fa Ngum appointed as spiritual adviser his religious teacher from Angkor, the monk Phra Maha Pasman, who arrived in Muang Sua in 1359 with a copy of the sacred Tripitaka texts. The reverend was forced to leave the revered Buddha statue called Phra Bang at Vieng Kham in the Vientiane area. The statue became the palladium of the monarchy and in the 16th century would be taken to Muang Sua, which would be renamed Luang Prabang in his honor.

Fa Ngum organized the conquered municipalities by making them into fiefdoms, at the head of which he placed princely rulers called chao. The borders of the kingdom, which had become one of the largest in Indochina, stretched from the southern frontiers of the Chinese Empire to today's Cambodia-Lao border, from the ridges of the Annamite range to most of the Korat Plateau.

In 1354, a campaign was undertaken that lasted until 1357 and completed the conquest of the Korat Plateau, with the subjugation of the principality of present-day Loei, and the southern principalities of Korat and Roi Et. The heir to the Khmer throne Prince Surya Daya had taken refuge in Lan Xang after the Siamese sack of the capital. With the help of Fa Ngum, to whom he was related, he regained control of the Khmer Empire in 1359, ousting the viceroy the Siamese had installed in Angkor and proclaiming himself emperor under the title Phra Suryavang. After the settlement, Suryavang sent His technicians and skilled laborers to Mueang to build palaces and temples worthy of the kingdom's grandeur.

The historic alliance with the Khmer led Fa Ngum to threaten the Kingdom of Ayutthaya, whose King Ramathibodi offered him as a token of peace some territories and his own daughter Nang Keo Lot Fa in marriage. The death of his Khmer wife and the intrigues of his Siamese wife brought Fa Ngum to a state of prostration that resulted in his dismissal in 1372. He was exiled to Nan, the capital of the small northern kingdom of the same name that had managed to retain its independence, where he died sometime between 1373 and 1393.

The kingdom's isolation, surrounded in the east, north, and west by mountainous areas of difficult access, and its alliance with the Khmer in the south ensured a period of stability. Fa Ngum's son Samsenthai succeeded his father in 1372 and remained on the throne until his death in 1417. His reign was marked by the absence of major conflicts, the first Lao census was taken, the army was reorganized, and important infrastructure was built. The subsequent reign of his son Lan Kham Deng (1417-1428) was also marked by peace and prosperity.

The unification of the kingdom had resulted in a split into two factions of the court aristocracy. One faction was sided with the ruler and linked to the Khmer Empire, which had provided Fa Ngum with the army with which he unified the Laotian principalities. The new Khmer aristocracy created at court overshadowed the old nobility of the Mueang Sua kingdom, which reacted by tying itself to the emerging Ayutthaya Kingdom, the Siamese state that disputed with the Khmer Empire for supremacy in Southeast Asia. Siamese interests were represented at court by Keo Lot Fa, whom his father Ramathibodi I, king of Ayutthaya, had given in marriage to Fa Ngum. The conflict between the two fractions would drag on for several decades and contributed to the Lan Xang crisis after the reign of Lan Kham Deng.

During that period of severe instability, the intrigues of the courtesan Maha Devi became embedded in the struggles between factions of the aristocracy and led to the assassination of at least six rulers within 12 years. Discontent began to surface even far from Mueang Sua, and in Vientiane there was a rebellion that was crushed. After a three-year interregnum in which the government was entrusted to a State Council headed by two high prelates, the first Lan Xang invasions took place. The kingdom had also been weakened by the new decline of Khmer allies who, under increasing pressure from Ayutthaya, abandoned Angkor after the new Siamese sacking of 1431 and moved the capital to Lovek, located further southwest.

The Laotians suffered their first heavy defeat in 1455, when the Lanna armies penetrated the country almost reaching the capital. They were repulsed at great cost by the Laotians, but managed to secure several border principalities between the two kingdoms. A new defeat took place in 1478 by Vietnamese invaders. The Dai Viet had been galvanized after their alliance with the Chinese emperor of the Ming Dynasty and the conquest of the Champa Kingdom, penetrated deeply into the Lan Xang kingdom going so far as to occupy the capital, and were driven out after inflicting heavy losses on Mueang Sua's troops.

The crisis of the kingdom resulted in the relative detachment of the municipalities furthest from the capital, which while remaining confederated to Lan Xang gradually gained a good degree of autonomy. This was one reason why the capital would later be moved to the more central Vientiane.

After the Vietnamese invasion in 1478, the process of reconstruction began. In 1480 the destroyed capital was rebuilt, peaceful relations were established with neighboring kingdoms, and slowly the prestige lost in recent decades was regained. In 1500, with Visunarat's accession to the throne, Lan Xang prospered again. The king was a fervent religious man, built beautiful temples and had the sacred scriptures translated from Pali to Laotian. During his reign the arts had a new impetus. Visunarat moved in the last years of his reign to rule in Vientiane,from where it was easier to control the turbulent southern provinces. Mueang Sua remained the official capital. Lan Xang was further consolidated during the reign of his successor Phothisarat I (1520-1550), who in turn moved the court to Vientiane in 1533, but Mueang Sua still remained the official capital. Like his father, he was a fervent Buddhist and declared Animism, hitherto an integral part of society, illegal, attracting the hostility of practitioners of that faith, which was the basis of the original Lao culture.

Photisarat was very active in foreign policy, first forging an alliance with the Lanna Kingdom, marrying a daughter of the ruler, but later breaking the long-standing peace ties between the Lang Xang and Ayutthaya Kingdoms. This led to an invasion of the country by the Siamese, which was repulsed. The ruler responded by allying with the Burmese and sacking several cities in Siam.

Setthathirat, son of Photisarat and Princess Lanna, became ruler of Lanna in 1546, after his maternal grandfather Mueang Keo had been succeeded by rulers who died leaving no heirs. In 1550 he left the capital Chiang Mai for good to attend his father's funeral, taking with him the revered Emerald Buddha statue. He became king of Lan Xang but was unable to retain the Lanna throne, opposed by the local aristocracy. The alarming Burmese expansion prompted him to officially move Lan Xang's capital to Vientiane in 1560, where he brought the Emerald Buddha and had the magnificent Pha That Luang stupa built. He had the name of Mueang Sua changed to Luang Prabang, in honor of the statue of Phra Bang, the palladium of the monarchy that he left in the old capital. He became a national hero for repelling three Burmese invasions and for the achievements he made in both domestic and foreign policy. He was also a fervent religious man and built important temples in Laotian cities.

In 1571, Setthatirat was succeeded by his son No Keo Kuman who was only one year old. He was joined by a regent who dethroned him in 1572. In 1575, the most serious invasion ever recorded up to that time took place; the Burmese of King Bayinnaung of the Taungu dynasty seized Vientiane and deported most of the population, including the usurper king and the infant No Keo Kuman, to the capital Pegu. Bayinnaung thus completed the conquests of all those territories that made Burma the largest empire that ever existed in Southeast Asia.

In 1581 Bayinnaung died, an event that in the following years would lead to the disintegration of the vast empire he had created. He was succeeded by his son Nanda Bayin, who lacked his father's charisma and skills. Lan Xang had been succeeded by vassal rulers of Burma, but in 1582 the court had no one to whom to entrust the throne and a period of confusion began. The power vacuum was exacerbated by the weakness of the Pegu court, which grappling with internal rebellions and those of the Tai kingdoms was no longer able to exert its influence over Vientiane.

The various factions of the aristocracy and the provincial governors had full autonomy but did not rebel against Burmese power, failing to agree on the choice of a ruler for about 8 years. Lan Xang would remain vassal to the Burmese until 1603, when Voravongse II was crowned king and on that occasion proclaimed the kingdom's independence from Burma after 28 years of subjugation. In the following years there were no international conflicts or invasions, but internal struggles continued to develop among the various noble factions of the kingdom. The governors of the southern provinces also continued their independence plots. Such struggles would continue through much of the 17th century and lead to the breakup of Lan Xang in 1707.

Infighting experienced a lull in 1638 with the accession to the throne of Surigna Vongsa, who was preferred over his cousins and older brothers by the most influential faction of the aristocracy of the time. He was an enlightened and magnanimous king, promoted the arts and was a fervent religious man. He made contacts of peace and friendship with King Narai the Great of Ayutthaya, together with whom he fixed the borders between the two states. Along the new border, to commemorate the event the two rulers had the Phra That Si Song Rak, literally the "stupa of love between the two nations," built in Loei Province.

This was the heyday for the kingdom, during which the first European envoys arrived at Lang Xang's court, calling Vientiane the most magnificent city in Southeast Asia. Surigna Vongsa was one of the world's longest-lived monarchs ever, having reigned from 1638 to 1690. He managed to maintain order and peace, but upon his death the ancient conflicts of the country's restless aristocracy resurfaced dramatically.

Successive rulers failed to reconcile the various noble factions. The last Lan Xang king was Setthathirat II, who, after a long period of exile in Vietnam, arrived in Vientiane at the head of a Vietnamese army in 1698. He regained the throne as a vassal of Vietnam, but his authority was challenged by his cousin Kitsarat, who deposed the viceroy of Luang Prabang and established an autonomous kingdom in the northern provinces. The king of Ayutthaya, concerned about Vietnamese influence in Vientiane, mediated reconciliation between the two cousins, who agreed to partition into the two new kingdoms of Lan Xang Luang Prabang and Lan Xang Vientiane in 1707.

The aristocracy of the southern principalities took advantage of the instability created and established the Kingdom of Champasak, which broke away from that of Vientiane in 1713. The throne was given to Setthathirat II's young half-brother, who became king under the royal name Soi Sisamut The Kingdom of Luang Prabang became a vassal of Burma in 1771 until 1779, when it was forced to become a Siamese vassal.

Siamese colonization

The three kingdoms, often in conflict with each other and weakened, were subjugated between 1777 and 1779 by Siam, rebuilt by King Taksin into the Kingdom of Thonburi after the destruction of the Kingdom of Ayutthaya at the hands of the Burmese Konbaung Dynasty.

The first to fall was that of Champasak in 1777, which supported the anti-Siamese rebellion of the governor of a border province. Two Siamese armies converged on the capital, which surrendered without a fight, and King Saya Kuman was deported to Siam. It was then the turn of Vientiane, whose King Bunsan had a rebel who had fled the country and settled in present-day Isan under Siamese protection killed. Thonburi's reaction was immediate; a large army under the command of General Phraya Chakri laid siege to Vientiane with the help of troops from Luang Prabang. King Bunsan fled and the capital fell in 1779, part of the royal family and high-ranking army officers were deported to Siam. Among the many goods stolen and brought to Thonburi were the sacred statues of Phra Bang and the Emerald Buddha. The territory west of the Mekong, today's Isan, was annexed to Siam.

The support provided to Siam by Luang Prabang in the conquest of Vientiane was not rewarded by King Taksin, who that same year made the northern Laotian kingdom a vassal state. In 1782, an internal rebellion ended the Kingdom of Thonburi and power was seized by General Phraya Chakri, who became king under the name Rama I and founded modern-day Bangkok, the capital of the new Kingdom of Rattanakosin. These events did not change the relationship between Siam and the Laotian vassal states.

In 1813 the Kingdom of Champasak became a principality. Vientiane King Anuvong's rebellion, which began in 1826, ended in December 1828 with the destruction of the capital, the deportation of several hundred thousand Laotians to the uninhabited areas of Isan, and the annexation of the Vientiane Kingdom to Siam. Anuvong was taken in chains to Bangkok, where he was publicly tortured and killed in January 1829. After the Vientiane territories were annexed to Bangkok, Luang Prabang reverted to being the sole Kingdom of Lan Xang, but continued to be a Siamese vassal.

French Colonization and the End of the Kingdom of Lan Xang

In the 19th century, the phenomenon of colonization by the French and British powers exploded in Southeast Asia, subjugating all the countries in the area except Siam. The French first conquered Vietnam and Cambodia, then in 1893 forced Siam to cede territories east of the Mekong to the newly created French protectorate of Laos, with its capital in Vientiane. The country was officially named Laos, a French-language transliteration of the term Lao. (That of Luang Prabang was entrusted to local King Sisavang Vong, who was granted legislative power but not control of the army. In 1904 the western part of the Principality of Champasak, which being on the right bank of the Mekong had remained in Siamese hands, was also annexed. The reunified principality was made into a province of which the prince himself was appointed governor.

In the colonial period, the French did not capillary occupy the country, which had no exploitable economic resources. It was pacified and used mainly as a buffer state to protect their territories from those of the British colonies. Toward the end of World War II, during the brief Japanese occupation that had expelled the French, Sisavang Vong was forced on April 8, 1945, by the new occupiers to declare the independence of the new Kingdom of Laos.

At the end of the conflict, the king was deposed by the Lao Issara movement, which established the first Laotian republic. The state was short-lived, and after a few months the French returned to retake control of the country. In 1946, the king was put back in charge of the reconstituted Kingdom of Laos, which in 1947 became a constitutional monarchy under the French Union. In 1953, the French were badly defeated in the Indochina War and forced to grant independence to both Laos and Vietnam. South Vietnam was given into the hands of a dictatorship of pro-Western Christians, and conflict arose with communist North Vietnam, which had triumphed in the war against the colonialists.

Beginning in 1953, the country's history was dominated by a civil war that would become the Laotian front for the neighboring Vietnamese conflict in the 1960s. The independence of the kingdom was only fictitious, The place of the French was taken by the United States, concerned about communist expansion in the region, which by virtue of Laotian supposed neutrality in the Vietnamese war did not officially colonize Laos. The Americans financed the kingdom and organized its armed forces, while rebels in the movement called Pathet Lao allied themselves with Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh communists, the architects of the French rout.

The devastation that followed ended in 1975 with the victory of the Pathet Lao communists, the deposition of the country's last ruler and the founding on December 2 of the Lao People's Democratic Republic. Thus ended, after more than 600 years, the monarchy founded by Fa Ngum. King Savang Vatthana was deported along with his entire family to a reeducation camp where he died, probably in 1978. Currently the heir to the throne is Soulivong Savang, who has been in exile in Paris since 1981.

All the rulers of the Kingdoms of Lan Xang, Luang Prabang and Vientiane up to and including the last king of Laos belonged to the Lan Xang dynasty, also called the Khun Lo dynasty, and in their official titles when they were crowned the Kingdom of the Million Elephants was always recalled.

Sources

1. Lan Xang
2. Lan Xang
3. ^ Luang Prabang Note on translation: "Bang" can be translated as "skinny/small" so Luang Prabang is "(City of the) Royal Skinny Buddha Image"
4. ^ a b c d Simm Peter e Sanda, 2001, Capitolo IV, pag. 55.
5. ^ a b (EN) Facts on Laos, su tourismlaos.org, 23 aprile 2012 (archiviato dall'url originale il 23 aprile 2012)., sul sito web del Ministero del Turismo Laotiano
6. 1 2 3 Simms, 1999, p. 30–35.
7. a b Oliver Tappe: Geschichte, Nationsbildung und Legitimationspolitik in Laos. Lit Verlag, Berlin/Münster 2008, S. 118.
8. Oliver Tappe: Geschichte, Nationsbildung und Legitimationspolitik in Laos. Lit Verlag, Berlin/Münster 2008, S. 119.