Land boundaries: total: 5,083 km border countries: Burma, Cambodia, China, Thailand and Vietnam.

Geography: landlocked; most of the country is mountainous and thickly forested; the Mekong River forms a large part of the western boundary with Thailand.

Climate: tropical monsoon; rainy season (May to November); dry season (December to April)

History

The Lao people share their early history with Thais. They are first recorded in the 7th century Near the Nanzhoa kingdom in present day Yunnan. Nanzhao was a Bai kindom that flourished in East Asia. Culturally, this polyethnic, hierarchical, and militarized state was to have a great influence on later societies in Indochina, transmitting the Tantric Buddhism of Bengal to Laos.

Another branch of this same migration bagan at the headwaters of the Nam Ou and followed it downstream to LuangPhrabang and continued through Xaignabouri to Chiang Mai.<{P> Muang Sua was the name of Luang Phrabang following its conquest in 698 by Khun Lo, who seized th thrown when the King of Nanzhao was away. Khun Lo's father Khun Borom, awarded the town to his son.

Khun Lo established a dynasty whose fifteen rulers reigned over an independent Muang Sua for the better part of a century.

In the 8th century, Nanzhao intervened frequently in the affairs of the principalities of the middle Mekong Valley, resulting in the occupation of Muang Sua in 709.

Nanzhao princes or administrators replaced the aristocracy of Thai overlords. Dates of the occupation are not known, but it probably ended well before the northward expansion of the Khmer Empire under Indravarman I (reigned 877-889) and extended as far as the territories of Sipsong Panna on the upper Mekong.

The Khmers founded an outpost at Sayfong near Vientiane, and Champa expanded again in southern Laos, maintaining its presence on the banks of the Mekong until 1070. Chanthaphanit, the local ruler of Sayfong, moved north to Muang Sua and was accepted peacefully as ruler after the departure of the Nanzhao administrators.

Chanthaphanit and his son had long reigns, during which the town became known by the Thai name Xieng Dong Xieng Thong.
The dynasty eventually became involved in the squabbles of a number of principalities. Khun Chuang, extended his territory as a result of the warring of these principalities and probably ruled from 1128 to 1169. Under Khun Chuang, a single family ruled over a far-flung territory and reinstituted the Siamese administrative system of the seventh century. Muang Sua next became the Kingdom of Sri Sattanak.

Muang Sua experienced a brief period of Khmer suzerainty under Jayavarman VII from 1185 to 1191. By 1180 the Sipsong Panna had regained their independence from the Khmers, however, and in 1238 an internal uprising in the Khmer outpost of Sukhothai expelled the Khmer overlords.

Mongol Influence

the Mongols, who destroyed Nanzhao in 1253 and made the area a province of their empire -- naming it Yunnan --exercised a decisive political influence in the middle Mekong Valley for the better part of a century. In 1271 Panya Lang, founder of a new dynasty headed by rulers bearing the title panya (lord), began his rule over a fully sovereign Muang Sua. In 1286 Panya Lang's son, Panya Khamphong, was involved in a coup d'etat that was probably instigated by the Mongols and that exiled his father. Upon his father's death in 1316, Panya Khamphong assumed his throne. Ramkhamhaeng, an early ruler of the new Thai dynasty in Sukhothai, made himself the agent of Mongol interests, and in 1282-84 eliminated the vestiges of Khmer and Cham power in central Laos. Ramkhamhaeng obtained the allegiance of Muang Sua and the mountainous country to the northeast.
Between 1286 and 1297, Panya Khamphong's lieutenants, acting for Ramkhamhaeng and the Mongols, pacified vast territories. From 1297 to 1301, Lao troops under Mongol command invaded Dai Viet but were repulsed by the Vietnamese. Troops from Muang Sua conquered Muang Phuan in 1292-97. In 1308 Panya Khamphong seized the ruler of Muang Phuan, and by 1312 this principality was a vassal state of Muang Sua.

Mongol overlordship was unpopular in Muang Sua. Internal conflicts among members of the new dynasty over Mongol intervention in their affairs resulted in continuing family upheavals. Panya Khamphong exiled his son Fa Phi Fa and most likely intended to leave the throne to his younger grandson, Fa Ngieo.
Fa Ngieo, involved in various coups and coup attempts, in 1330 sent his two sons to a Buddhist monastery outside the Mongol realm for safety. The brothers were kidnapped in 1335 and taken to Angkor, where they were entrusted to King Jayavarman Paramesvara, whose kingdom had acknowledged Mongol suzerainty since 1285.

The younger brother, Fa Ngum, married one of the king's daughters and in 1349 set out from Angkor at the head of a 10,000-man army. His conquest of the territories to the north of Angkor over the next six years reopened Mongol communications with that place, which had been cut off.

Fa Ngum organized the conquered principalities into provinces, and reclaimed Muang Sua from his father and elder brother. Fa Ngum was crowned king of Lan Xang at Vientiane, the site of one of his victories, in June 1354.

Lan Xang extended from the border of China to Sambor below the Mekong rapids at Khong Island and from the Vietnamese border to the western escarpment of the Khorat Plateau.

Fa Ngum’s son, Samsenthai, who reigned 1373-1416, consolidated the royal administration, developing Luang Prabang as a trading and religious center. His death was followed by unrest under a swift succession of lackluster monarchs. Luang Prabang came under increasing threat from incursions by the Vietnamese and later the Burmese.

In 1563, King Settathirat declared Vientiane the capital of Lan Xang, and built Wat Pra Keo to house the Emerald Buddha, a gift from the king of Ceylon, as a new talisman for the kingdom.
Settathirat is revered as one of the great Lao kings because he protected the nation from foreign subjugation. When he disappeared in 1574 on a military campaign, the kingdom rapidly declined and was subject to Burmese invasion. There was a quick and lackluster succession of kings after Settathirat.

King Souligna Vongsa, who ruled 1633-94, brought stability and peace back to the kingdom – a period regarded as Lan Xang’s golden age.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Early History of Laos"