The Last Century of Lao Royalty: A Documentary History

Reviewed by Geoffrey Cain

Published in the Far Eastern Economic Review on 3 April 2009
http://www.feer.com/reviews/2009/april51/the-last-century-of-lao-royalty-a-documentary-history

Following a vicious twenty-year insurgency by the communist Pathet Lao rebels, the charismatic King Sisavang Vatthana of Laos abdicated in November 1975 amid protests in the historic capital, Luang Prabang. A skilled and opulent diplomat who had graced both John F. Kennedy’s White House and the Soviet Politburo, King Vatthana took off his royal costume and bathed in the Mekong River with commoners, a sign of the changing power structure in the Southeast Asian country. Yet his fall signified more than just a shift away from the century-old Lao monarchy.

As events unfolded, the king realized the revolution was turning more grotesque and more militant than mere river bathing. Royal family members who didn’t flee the country were sent to labor camps in 1977, where most perished. The new communist government, gripped by the revolutionary fervor that had engulfed neighboring Vietnam and Cambodia, destroyed royal documents in a bid to erase the country’s once-beloved monarchy from history.

Anthropologist Grant Evans, a prolific writer on Laos, reconstructs that lost history with a treasure trove of newly published letters, photographs and interviews with Lao royal family members. The breadth of these documents, coupled with his own colorful insight into the traditions and rituals of the Lao royalty, makes this book a godsend for academics researching a rather obscure topic.

Mr. Evans argues that the history of the Lao royal family is one of clashes between modern French colonialism and traditional monarchy, as Laos was never a state but collection of weak kingdoms being invaded back and forth for centuries. Stripping his arguments to the bare bones, he contends like many anthropologists that the concept of the state was an artificial creation of Western colonization, and that the Lao monarchy—once limited to the tiny territory of Luang Prabang—is no different.

Therefore, he claims, the kings of the Luang Prabang were in a chronic bind. For a century, they juggled the interests of their own people, powerful Siam (now Thailand), invading Chinese Haw armies, French administrators, and the Vietnam War whose communist movement was pulling them in. King Vatthana managed to reconcile the push and pull into a secure Lao state in 1949, although he never quite brought national reconciliation through his struggle to bring modernity, says Mr. Evans.

Nonacademics be warned, however, that the analysis does get unnecessarily dense. “As we can see in the case of the role of royal rituals, the loss of enchantment can mean the depletion of mediating symbols between social groups and social interests,” Mr. Evans writes. “Social life in Laos, however, remains ‘enchanted.’” Such heavy-handed anthropological theory dilutes what should be straightforward historical documentation, making the book’s title deceiving for those seeking a primer on Lao kings. But Mr. Evans hails from the ivory tower of cultural anthropology, and in that field his book surely excels.

In the same chapter, Mr. Evans jumps around to random monarchies in random countries, all with different historical contexts, trying to tie them together into some sort of grand anthropological theory of royalty. “British anthropologist of caste in India Declan Quigly has pointed out that the installation rituals of kings often entail ritual acts that separate them from the ordinary rules of kinship, for example,” he writes. “In this way their allegiance gives the appearance of being general rather than particular.” These forced comparisons add little to the reader’s understanding of Lao monarchy.

Yet The Last Century of Lao Royalty elucidates much needed information on the country, which is the preserve of a small number of scholars. Mr. Evans even notes that many Laotians were “deeply moved” and “genuinely puzzled” after seeing the unearthed photographs, especially because many had only faint memories of the government’s antiroyal purge in the 1970s and 1980s.

The more notable letters shed light on the power politics between King Sisavang Vong and Prince Phetsarath Rattanavongsa, who sparred over whether to endorse or reject France when Laos was setting up its independent government structure in the 1940s. King Vatthana was the winner after he gained French support, dismissing Prince Phetsarath as prime minister in 1946. Other documentation shows us King Vatthana’s final days, including the last known photo of the king and queen as they prayed before their deaths in prison camps in 1980 and 1982, respectively.

Also unique is the book’s focus on ritual. The documents reveal much about the coronations, marriages and deaths of royal family members. Many of these rituals are otherwise forgotten.

Mr. Evans concludes by describing the royal ceremonies he has attended in recent years, shadows of the glory they once exalted. Unlike those in the past, most gatherings are kept private among exile communities in France, he says. And while he vividly captures the spooky feel of the Lao royalty fading into memory—a recurring theme in his book—casual readers will find his theories get in the way of their stories. Nonspecialists should consult Mr. Evans’s A Short History of Laos before tackling this monster of a book.

Geoffrey Cain is a free-lance writer based in Ho Chi Minh City.