ABSTRACT
After WWII Vientiane became the capital of a reconstituted Lao state.
Formerly an administrative outpost of the most peripheral of regions in
French Indochina, Vientiane emerged as the political centre of a post-colo-
nial nation, assuming an importance as a seat of Lao elite power that it had
not enjoyed for 400 years. For the nationalists who supported the first
assertive declaration of Lao independence and unification in Vientiane in
1946 and witnessed its final realization some years later, it represented the
reclamation – however compromised in a territorial sense – of the historical Lao meuang.1 But Vientiane was a problematic centre of an equally prob-
lematic post-colonial state. For a period of over 20 years, from formal
independence to the eventual collapse of the Royal Lao Government
(RLG), Vientiane’s administrative reach and influence over its diverse hin-
terland was only ever partial and uneven. This problematic situation
emerged from the combined obstacles of limited resources, a difficult geography, and persistent political and military conflict. Above all it was the
latter which shaped the development of the capital and its role, as within a
few years of the close of WWII the tiny state of Laos had became a central
arena in the geo-politics of the Cold War.
