1778
Thai forces invade southern Laos and conquer the kingdom of Champasak.
1826–28
Chao Anou succeeds his two older brothers on the throne of Viang Chan and wages war against Siam for Lao independence. He is captured and Viang Chan is sacked by the Siamese armies.
1867
Members of the French Mekong expedition reach Luang Prabang. Over the next 20 years the town is caught up in a struggle which sees the king offered protection by France.
1885
Following centuries of successive invasions by neighbouring powers, the former Lan Xang is broken up into a series of states under Siamese control.
1893
A French warship reaches Bangkok, guns trained on the palace. This forces the Siamese to give France sovereignty over all Lao territories east of the Mekong.
1904
King Sisavang Vong founds the modern royal family.
1907
The present borders of Laos are established by international treaty. Vientiane (the French spelling of Viang Chan) becomes the administrative capital.
1935
The first two Lao members join the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP), founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930.
1942
As WWII spills over into Asia, the Japanese invade and occupy Laos with the cooperation of pro-Vichy French colonial authorities.
1945
The Japanese occupy Laos then force the king to declare independence; a nationalist resistance movement, the Lao Issara, takes shape and forms an interim government.
1946
The French reoccupy Laos, sending the Lao Issara government into exile.
1949
France grants Laos partial independence within the Indochinese Federation and some of the Lao Issara leaders return to work for complete Lao independence from France.
1950
Lao communists (the Pathet Lao) form a 'Resistance Government'. Souphanouvong becomes the public face of the Resistance Government and president of the Free Laos Front.
1953
The Franco–Lao Treaty of Amity and Association grants full independence to Laos and a Lao delegation attends a conference in Geneva where a regroupment area is set aside for Pathet Lao Forces.
1955
Pathet Lao leaders form the Lao People's Party (later the Lao People's Revolutionary Party) with a broad political front called the Lao Patriotic Front (LPF).
1957
The First Coalition Government of National Union is formed and collapses after a financial and political crisis.
1958
The government falls and comes under the control of the right-wing, US-backed Committee for the Defence of National Interests (CDNI).
1960
Guerrilla warfare covers large areas. A neutralist coup d'état is followed by the battle for Vientiane.
1961
Orders given to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to form a 'secret army' in northern Laos with links to the American war in Vietnam.
1962
The Geneva Agreement on Laos establishes the second coalition government that balances Pathet Lao and rightist representation with neutralist voting powers.
1964
The US begins air war against ground targets in Laos, mostly against communist positions on the Plain of Jars.
1964–73
The Second Indochina War spills over into Laos. Both the North Vietnamese and US presence increases dramatically and bombing extends along the length of Laos.
1968
The Tet Offensive by the Viet Cong in neighbouring Vietnam turns public opinion in the US against the Second Indochina War.
1974
Finally a 1973 ceasefire in Vietnam means an end to fighting in Laos and the formation of the third coalition government.
1975
Communists seize power and declare the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR). This ends 650 years of the Lao monarchy.
1979
Agricultural cooperatives are abandoned and first economic reforms introduced.
1986
The 'New Economic Mechanism' opens the way for a market economy and foreign investment.
1987
A three-month border war breaks out between Laos and Thailand, ending in a truce in February 1988.
1991
The constitution of the Lao PDR is proclaimed. General Khamtay Siphandone becomes state president.
1995
Luang Prabang is World Heritage–listed. Wat Phu, the ancient Khmer temple near Champasak, is listed shortly after.
1997
Laos joins the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
1998–2000
The Asian economic crisis seriously impacts on the Lao economy. China and Vietnam come to the country's aid with loans and advice.
2000
The economic crisis sparks some political unrest. Anti-government Lao rebels attack a customs post on the Thai border. Five are killed.
2001
A series of small bomb explosions worries the regime, which responds by increasing security.
2004
Security is still tight when Laos hosts the 10th ASEAN summit in Vientiane, the largest gathering of world leaders ever assembled in Laos.
2005
Ten-yearly census is conducted, putting population of Laos at 5,621,982.
2006
The Eighth Congress of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party and National Assembly elections endorse a new political leadership.
2009
Laos hosts the 25th Southeast Asia Games. Four thousand Hmong refugees are forcibly repatriated from Thailand.
2010
The Nam Theun II hydropower dam, the largest in mainland Southeast Asia, begins production.
2011
Laos wins gold medals in the pétanque events at the Southeast Asian games, but it's not yet slated to be included as an Olympic sport.
2012
Internationally acclaimed community-development worker Sombath Somphone disappears. The Lao Government deny responsibility for his disappearance.
2012
Laos plays host to the 9th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Vientiane in November.
2013
Work begins on the Xayaboury Dam, the first dam to be built on the Mekong River in Laos. Cambodia and Vietnam raise objections.
2016
Vice President of Laos Bounnhang Vorachith becomes Laos' new supreme leader.
2016
US President Barack Obama becomes the first sitting president to visit Laos, pledging US$90m over the next three years for UXO clean-up.
People & Culture
It's hard to think of any other country with a population as laid-back as Laos – bor Ъen nyăng (no problem) could be the national motto. On the surface at least, nothing seems to faze the Lao, whose national character is a complex combination of culture, environment and religion.
The National Psyche
To a large degree 'Lao-ness' is defined by Buddhism, specifically Theravada Buddhism, which emphasises the cooling of human passions. Thus strong emotions are a taboo in Lao society. Kamma (karma), more than devotion, prayer or hard work, is believed to determine one's lot in life, so the Lao tend not to get too worked up over the future. It's a trait often perceived by outsiders as a lack of ambition.
Lao commonly express the notion that 'too much work is bad for your brain' and they often say they feel sorry for people who 'think too much'. Education in general isn't highly valued, although this attitude is changing with modernisation and greater access to opportunities beyond the country's borders. Avoiding any undue psychological stress, however, remains a cultural norm. From the typical Lao perspective, unless an activity – whether work or play – contains an element of móoan (fun), it will probably lead to stress.
The contrast between the Lao and the Vietnamese is an example of how the Annamite Chain has served as a cultural fault line dividing Indo-Asia and
Sino-Asia, as well as a geographic divide. The French summed it up as: 'The Vietnamese plant the rice, the Cambodians tend the rice and the Lao listen to it grow.' And while this saying wasn't meant as a compliment, a good number of French colonialists found the Lao way too seductive to resist, and stayed on.
The Lao have always been quite receptive to outside assistance and foreign investment, since it promotes a certain degree of economic development without demanding a corresponding increase in productivity. The Lao government wants all the trappings of modern technology – the skyscrapers seen on socialist propaganda billboards – without having to give up Lao traditions, including the móoan philosophy. The challenge for Laos is to find a balance between cultural preservation and the development of new attitudes that will lead the country towards a measure of self-sufficiency.
Laos: Culture and Society (2000), by Grant Evans (ed), brings together a dozen essays on Lao culture, among them a profile of a self-exiled Lao family that eventually returned to Laos, and two well-researched studies of the modernisation and politicalisation of the Lao language.
Lifestyle
Maybe it's because everything closes early, even in the capital, that just about everyone in Laos gets up before 6am. Their day might begin with a quick breakfast, at home or from a local noodle seller, before work. In Lao Loum (Lowland Lao) and other Buddhist areas, the morning also sees monks collecting alms, usually from women who hand out rice and vegetables outside their homes in return for a blessing.
School-age children will walk to a packed classroom housed in a basic building with one or two teachers. Secondary students often board during the week because there are fewer secondary schools and it can be too far to commute. Almost any family who can afford it pays for their kids to learn English, which is seen as a near-guarantee of future employment.
Given that most Lao people live in rural communities, work is usually some form of manual labour. Depending on the season, and the person's location and gender (women and men have clearly defined tasks when it comes to farming), work might be planting or harvesting rice or other crops. Unlike neighbouring Vietnam, the Lao usually only harvest one crop of rice each year, meaning there are a couple of busy periods followed by plenty of time when life can seem very laid-back.
During these quiet periods, men will fish, hunt and repair the house, while women might gather flora and fauna from the forest, weave fabrics and collect firewood. At these times there's something wonderfully social and uncorrupted about arriving in a village mid-afternoon, sitting in the front of the local 'store' and sharing a lòw-lów (rice whisky) or two with the locals, without feeling like you're stealing their time.
Where vices are concerned, lòw-lów is the drug of choice for most Lao, particularly in rural areas where average incomes are so low that Beerlao is beyond most budgets. Opium is the most high-profile of the other drugs traditionally used – and tolerated – in Laos, though recent crop-clearing has made it less available. In cities, yaba (methamphethamine), in particular, has become popular among young people.
Because average incomes are low in Laos (US$111 per month), despite the minimum wage being increased by 44% in 2015, the Lao typically socialise as families, pooling their resources to enjoy a bun wat (temple festival) or picnic at the local waterfall together. The Lao tend to live in extended families, with three or more generations sharing one house or compound, and dine together sitting on mats on the floor with rice and dishes shared by all.
Most Lao don some portion of the traditional garb during ceremonies and celebrations: the men a pàh bęeang (shoulder sash), the women a similar sash, tight-fitting blouse and pàh nung (sarong). In everyday life men wear neat but unremarkable shirt-and-trousers combinations. However, it's still normal for women to wear the pàh nung or sin (sarong). Other ethnicities living in Laos, particularly Chinese and Vietnamese women, will wear the pàh nung when they visit a government office, or risk having any civic requests denied.
The Laos Cultural Profile (www.culturalprofiles.net/laos) was established by Visiting Arts and the Ministry of Information & Culture of Laos. It covers a broad range of cultural aspects, from architecture to music, and is an easy entry point into Lao culture.
Population
Laos has one of the lowest population densities in Asia, but the number of people has more than doubled in the last 30 years, and continues to grow quickly. One-third of the country's seven million inhabitants live in cities in the Mekong River valley, chiefly Vientiane, Luang Prabang, Savannakhet and Pakse. Another one-third live along other major rivers.
This rapid population growth comes despite the fact that about 10% of the population fled the country after the 1975 communist takeover. Vientiane and Luang Prabang lost the most inhabitants, with approximately a quarter of the population of Luang Prabang going abroad. During the last couple of decades this emigration trend has been reversed so that the influx of immigrants (mostly repatriated Lao, but also Chinese, Vietnamese and other nationalities) now exceeds the number of émigrés.
Most expatriate Westerners living in Laos are temporary employees of multilateral and bilateral aid organisations. A smaller number are employed by foreign companies involved in mining, petroleum, hydropower and the tourism industry.
Feature-film-making resumed in Laos in 1997 with the release of Than Heng Phongphai (The Charming Forest) directed by Vithoun Sundara. This was followed in 2001 by Falang Phon (Clear Skies After Rain), and in 2004 by Leum Teua (Wrongfulness), also directed by Sundara.
Ethnic Groups
Laos is often described as less a nation state than a conglomeration of tribes and languages. And depending on who you talk with, that conglomeration consists of between 49 and 134 different ethnic groups. The lower figure is officially used by the government.
While the tribal groups are many and varied, the Lao traditionally divide themselves into four categories: Lao Loum, Lao Tai, Lao Thoeng and Lao Soung. These classifications loosely reflect the altitudes at which the groups live, and, by implication (it's not always accurate), their cultural proclivities. To address some of these inaccuracies, the Lao government recently reclassified ethnic groups into three major language families: Austro-Tai, Austro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan. However, many people do not know which language family they come from, so here we'll stick with the more commonly understood breakdown.
Just over half the population are ethnic Lao or Lao Loum, and these are clearly the most dominant group. Of the rest, 10% to 20% are tribal Tai; 20% to 30% are Lao Thoeng ('Upland Lao' or lower-mountain dwellers, mostly of proto-Malay or Mon-Khmer descent); and 10% to 20% are Lao Soung ('Highland Lao', mainly Hmong or Mien tribes who live higher up).
The Lao government has an alternative three-way split, in which the Lao Tai are condensed into the Lao Loum group. This triumvirate is represented on the back of every 1000 kip bill, in national costume, from left to right: Lao Soung, Lao Loum and Lao Thoeng.
Small Tibeto-Burman hill-tribe groups in Laos include the Lisu, Lahu, Lolo, Akha and Phu Noi. They are sometimes classified as Lao Thoeng, but like the Lao Soung they live in the mountains of northern Laos.
Article 9 of the current Lao constitution forbids all religious proselytising, and the distribution of religious materials outside churches, temples or mosques is illegal. Foreigners caught distributing religious materials may be arrested and expelled from the country.
Lao Loum
The dominant ethnic group is the Lao Loum (Lowland Lao), who live in the fertile plains of the Mekong River valley or lower tributaries of the Mekong. Thanks to their superior numbers and living conditions, they have dominated the smaller ethnic groups for centuries. Their language is the national language; their religion, Buddhism, is the national religion; and many of their customs, including the eating of sticky rice and the bąasǐi (sacred string-tying ceremonies), are interpreted as those of the Lao nation, even though they play no part in the lives of many other ethnic groups.
Lao Loum culture has traditionall
y consisted of a sedentary, subsistence lifestyle based on wet-rice cultivation. The people live in raised homes and, like most Austro-Tais, are Theravada Buddhists who retain strong elements of animist spirit worship.
The distinction between 'Lao' and 'Thai' is a rather recent historical phenomenon, especially considering that 80% of all those who speak a language recognised as 'Lao' reside in northeastern Thailand. Even Lao living in Laos refer idiomatically to different Lao Loum groups as 'Tai' or 'Thai', such as Thai Luang Phabang (Lao from Luang Prabang).
Lao Tai
Although they're closely related to the Lao, these Tai (or sometimes Thai) subgroups have resisted absorption into mainstream Lao culture and tend to subdivide themselves according to smaller tribal distinctions. Like the Lao Loum, they live along river valleys, but the Lao Tai have chosen to reside in upland valleys rather than in the lowlands of the Mekong floodplains.
Depending on their location, they cultivate dry (mountain) rice as well as wet (irrigated) rice. The Lao Tai also mix Theravada Buddhism and animism, but tend to place more importance on spirit worship than do the Lao Loum.
Generally speaking, the various Lao Tai groups are distinguished from one another by the predominant colour of their clothing, or by the general area of habitation; for example, Tai Dam (Black Tai), Tai Khao (White Tai), Tai Pa (Forest Tai), Tai Neua (Northern Tai) and so on.
Due to Laos' ethnic diversity, 'Lao culture' only exists among the Lao Loum (Lowland Lao), who represent about half the population. Lao Loum culture predominates in the cities, towns and villages of the Mekong River valley.
Lao Thoeng
The Lao Thoeng (Upland Lao) are a loose affiliation of mostly Austro-Asiatic peoples who live on mid-altitude mountain slopes in northern and southern Laos. The largest group is the Khamu, followed by the Htin, Lamet and smaller numbers of Laven, Katu, Katang, Alak and other Mon-Khmer groups in the south. The Lao Thoeng are also known by the pejorative term khàa, which means 'slave' or 'servant'. This is because they were used as indentured labour by migrating Austro-Thai peoples in earlier centuries and more recently by the Lao monarchy. They still often work as labourers for the Lao Soung.
Lonely Planet Laos Page 50