ABSTRACT
The most turbulently disputed postwar arena in South-east Asia was Indo-China. This area, put together by the French, contained the protectorates of Annam and Tonkin and the colony of Cochin-China (Annamite by race, Chinese by culture, and together called the three Kys) and the protected kingdoms of Luang Prabang or Laos, and Cambodia (Thai by race, Hindu by culture). The Khmer forebears of the modern Cambodians ruled an empire which, at its peak in the twelfth century, reached from sea to sea and included the southern parts of Burma, Siam, Laos and Annam. In Laos invading Thais had established an ascendancy in the thirteenth century. By the nineteenth Cambodia and Laos were threatened by Annam but were saved by the French.
