Laos (Cultures Of The World), by Stephen Mansfield

In many ways, Laos is a somewhat forgotten country in Southeast Asia. With a small population, desperate poverty, and little arable land or glorious ruins from bygone days, Laos misses the kind of easy tourism opportunities that its neighbors have. With a population mostly involved in farming and no particularly massive cities (even its capital is not extremely large at all by world standards, or even local standards), the nation has slipped beneath the radar. Yet Laos does have considerable interest, even if, sadly, there are more speakers of Lao (or Isan) in Northeastern Thailand than there are in Laos itself due to the vagaries of history that allowed Thailand to expand well into the area of Laotian people where the Lao speakers are still considered (along with the Lanna areas in Northern Thailand) as second-class citizens. This is to be regretted, but with the building of many friendship bridges across the Mekong River, it appears that at least Laos’ border cities are getting some attention and some infrastructure to allow for trade and tourism to flourish in an area where it has been slow to take off.

Even if Laos is fairly obscure as a country, though, there is a considerable amount worth knowing. Due to Cold War politics during the Vietnam War, the nation of Laos suffered badly from American bombing, which has not been widely known because Laotian neutrality was not respected by either the Americans or the Vietnamese during that conflict. After the Vietnam War, the rule of Laos by rigid communists led to a lot of economic suffering as well as internal difficulties with some of Laos’ own complex population. Figuring out ethnicity in Laos is a considerable problem given the imprecise terms used, as large numbers of groups are divided into categories based on where peoples live rather than precisely what sort of ethnolinguistic identity they have. Still, besides the Lao themselves there are Hmong, some Chinese of various kinds, small minorities of various Austro-Asiatic speakers, as well as some of the same hill tribes that Thailand has. If the nation is able to develop without losing its natural beauty, and can attract some tourists and develop some of its historical and cultural infrastructure, the nation has a chance to develop, but keeping its environment under control is going to be challenging.

In terms of its contents, this book is a bit less than 150 pages, divided into thirteen or so chapters. The book begins with a discussion of Laos today before moving into a discussion of its challenging geography (1), starting along the Mekong River and bounded by high mountains with little arable land. This is followed by a discussion of Laos’ troubled history of seeking to remain free from dominating neighbors in the face of often divisive internal politics (2). The author then discusses the government of Laos (3), along with its fairly basic farming, logging, and mining economy (4). The author discusses the environment specifically (5) before moving on to discuss the complexities of the Lao people (6). This is followed by chapters on lifestyle (7), religion (8), which is a mixture of Buddhism and animist beliefs, as well as the language of the Lao people, which is a close cousin of Thai, mutually intelligible with it (9). The author then discusses the arts (10), leisure activities (11), festivals (12), and the food of Laos (13). After this, the book closes with a map of Laos, information about its economy, culture, a timeline, glossary, suggestions for further reading, a bibliography, and an index.