South East Asia Research

This article examines the political dimension of historiography in contributing to the Lao nation-state building project, with particular reference to institutional and social forms of Lao political culture, the role of minority groups during the Revolution and the lingering shadow of the country's aristocratic past. Reference is made to several key issues in current Lao historiography. The article also raises the issue of the respective political responsibilities of Lao and foreign historians in helping to construct a national history.

This article focuses on the 1,300-page Pavatsat Lao published in Vientiane in 2000, by far the most comprehensive national history to be written since 1975. Through the review of the book's main themes and agendas, it seeks to show how the Lao past is being constructed and reconstructed as the nation enters the twenty-first century. Of particular interest is the treatment of early Lao civilization, as well as the ways in which the past is being reconstructed to minimize ethnic difference and to produce an integrated multi-ethnic history.

The historiography of what is now the country of Laos has remained relatively underdeveloped since the colonial period. The earliest scholarly works produced by Lao and foreign authors were based on certain assumptions that have remained unquestioned despite serious problems with the sources. Recent epigraphical and archaeological discoveries have permitted a rethinking of these assumptions, and hold out the promise of further revisions of our view of the Lao past. Particularly worth exploring are the cultural and artistic connections between the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang and the northern Thai kingdom of Lanna.

This paper reviews a crucial period in Lao history, the early years of the revolution between 1945 and 1949, with a special focus on the hinterland areas of south-eastern Laos. Along with the professional historians' reconstituted past, two other analytically different approaches to the narration of this period are discussed: the myth-making narration as found in a recently published Lao history book, and the narrative as remembered by a war veteran who was directly involved in the events.

This article uncovers the legend of Senpongsimun, a Phunoy hero, as narrated by members of the Tibeto-Burmese-speaking group living in northern Laos. By highlighting the story of the highland hero, the article seeks to disclose these people's vision of the past, and more significantly, their unorthodox strategy to maintain a distinctive identity from the ethnic majority in contemporary Laos.

This paper examines the interpretation of the World Heritage city Luang Prabang (the former royal capital of Laos), investigating the relationships between the goals and strategies of international organizations such as UNESCO and the priorities of the Lao state. Refuting the idea that the World Heritage system represents a form of cultural globalization, the authors instead suggest that there is a marked convergence of the interests of international heritage bodies managing World Heritage and the Lao authorities anxious to portray a particular vision of national identity through selective recognition of cultural heritage locations.

This paper reviews current discussion of the issue of just what is lost when a language dies. Special reference is made to the current situation in Laos, a country renowned for its considerable cultural and linguistic diversity. It focuses on the historical, anthropological and ecological knowledge that a language can encode, and the social and cultural consequences of the loss of such traditional knowledge when a language is no longer passed on. Finally, the article points out the paucity of studies and obstacles to field research on minority languages in Laos, which seriously hamper their documentation.