Laos is Southeast Asia’s only landlocked country
The Lao People’s Democratic Republic is Mainland Southeast Asia’s sole landlocked state, wedged among Myanmar, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand. Forested mountains crest at Phou Bia, while the Mekong River traces much of the western border with Thailand on its way south toward Cambodia.
A skull of at least 46,000 years, recovered in 2009 from Tam Pa Ling Cave in the Annamites, was then the oldest modern human fossil known in Southeast Asia. Farming emerged in the fourth millennium BCE, bronze around 1500 BCE, and iron tools by 700 BCE. Names for the country include Muang Lao and Pathet Lao, and theories trace Lao to a Pali word for bottle gourd, the Han-era Ai Lao, or an Austroasiatic root.
Prince Fa Ngum founded Lan Xang, the kingdom of a million elephants, in the fourteenth century, capturing Vientiane with 10,000 Khmer troops and making Theravada Buddhism the state religion. Photisarath moved the capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane in 1520 to counter Burma, and Setthathirath, crowned in 1548, commissioned That Luang. Sourigna Vongsa, king from 1637, died without an heir, and in 1707 the realm split into Luang Prabang, Vientiane, and Champasak.
Burma annexed Luang Prabang in the 1760s and Siam dominated the south, raiding for captives; a British observer called an 1876 campaign large-scale slave hunting. After China’s Black Flag Army sacked Luang Prabang, France absorbed the principalities into Indochina from 1893. Laos supplied tin, rubber, and coffee but never more than 1 per cent of Indochina’s exports. Nationalists declared independence in March 1945, the Pathet Lao fought alongside the Viet Minh, and the 1954 Geneva Conference ended French rule.
The climate is tropical savanna with monsoon rains from May to October. Since 1993, 21 per cent of the land has been reserved for conservation, and parks such as Nam Et-Phou Louey shelter the saola and northern white-cheeked gibbon. The country has 17 provinces plus the Vientiane prefecture and a revised 2015 population of about 6.67 million.
Source: Laos
