“In Defense of Liberal Democracy, Anti-Communism and the Lao Race:
The Second Indochina War as a Lao War”
Ryan Wolfson-Ford
Southeast Asian Reference Librarian
Library of Congress Asian Division
On the night of May 18, 1959 as fighting erupted between Royal Lao Army (RLA) and Pathet Lao forces no one knew that this would be the start of a 16-year war that would only end with the bloody demise of the first post-colonial state of Laos, the Royal Lao Government (1945-1975). Scholars remain unaware of key points about the Second Indochina War in Laos (e.g., casualty figures), but its origins remain shrouded and murky. What were the origins of this war? This talk examines the little-known role of the RLG in initiating the largest war in Lao history. From the RLG perspective, the war was fought to defend liberal democracy, independence and anti-communism, which each had been developing more independently and organically since 1945-46 than scholars realize. RLG civilian and military officials were also blinkered by a potent new post-colonial Lao nationalism that viewed Vietnamese as a bitter racial enemy. Amid the Cold War they sought to settle scores from the French colonial-era when Vietnamese dominated Lao cities, schools, the indigenous guard and the colonial administration. The Vietnamese in Laos had even tried to seize power in August 1945 before the Lao independence movement could gain momentum. And the communist movement in Laos was almost entirely Vietnamese. To RLG leaders, the Second Indochina War was not just about defending democracy and anti-communism, but about saving Laos from Vietnamese colonialism and the Lao race from extinction at the hands of the Vietnamese.
This was further compounded by additional factors. In the lead up to war, there was a highly contentious election in 1958 that led to the outbreak of violence. There was also a new rightwing, anti-communist nationalist government that included military officers in the cabinet for the first time. And many Lao elites were infuriated by the PRC invasion of Tibet in April 1959, which led some Lao to call for a “holy war.” Finally, when the Pathet Lao refused to integrate into the RLA war returned, but why did the RLG refuse peace talks when facing a far more power foe — the DRV — before which the RLA was clearly outmatched? RLG leaders were blinded by their own anti-communist nationalism seeking to liberate the country from Vietnamese domination in an apocalyptic fight of a Lao race against a Red Sino-Vietnamese race; just as commentators spoke of saving the country from the Chinese who forced Lao out of southern China thousands of years ago. Laos has too often been seen as little more than a pawn or victim of foreign powers during the Cold War, but the RLG had its own complex, multifaceted, equally flawed and valid reasons to go to war. The Second Indochina War in Laos was a Lao war. And to fully understand the Second Indochina War in Laos we must understand the RLG role in events.
Ryan Wolfson-Ford is a scholar of Lao history. His forthcoming book, Forsaken Causes: Liberal Democracy and Anticommunism in Cold War Laos, is an intellectual history of Cold War Laos, including the first analysis of liberal democracy, anti-communist ideology and post-colonial nationalism at the heart of the Royal Lao Government (1945-1975). He has conducted archival research in Laos, Thailand, France and the United States. He was a lecturer of Asian history at Arizona State University for the 2019-2020 academic year. Currently, he is a Southeast Asian reference librarian at the Library of Congress Asian Division. His publications include articles in peer-reviewed journals (Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, South East Asia Research, SOJOURN) and book chapters in edited volumes, including most recently, The Routledge Handbook of Nationalism in East and Southeast Asia and a chapter on “the past” in the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Laos.
This event is free and open to the public. A recording will be available on the CSEAS YouTube channel following the event.