From the fourteenth century, there was already some interaction within the polity of the Lao kingdoms between ethnic Lao lowlanders and the highland peoples of various ethnic origins. The latter were the “others”, however, geographically, culturally, politically and symbolically located at the edge of the kingdom. Here, I will discuss the relationship between lowland and highland peoples in historical perspective, from the Lan Xang era to the period of French Indochina (1887–1945). My aim is to show the changing patterns of interactions between these two populations and, more significantly, the disruptive impact of French colonial administration, of which the most intriguing symptom was arguably the emergence of a modern identity among some highland groups in colonial Laos. French policy, especially towards the upland peoples, played a significant part in the rise of rebellions that occurred from the late nineteenth century in Indochina. It also, albeit indirectly and involuntarily, led to the transformation of some of these revolts into modern political claims. In the last section, I will focus on Ong Kommandam' armed resistance in southern Laos as a remarkable example of the emergence of ethnic consciousness in colonial Laos and as an early expression of identity politics before the advent of an independent Laos.

The divinities, the ethnic Lao and the upland people

Geographical and ecological frontiers

The polity of the traditional Lao kingdom, like other pre-modern Southeast Asian states, was based on an ecological and geographical core which was immutable, constituting as it did the “heartland of irrigated rice cultivation” (Leach 1960–61, p. 56). Beyond this heartland, the state could expand or retract since it had no irrevocably fixed boundaries, nor a permanent administrative apparatus. The core of the kingdom, the rice-lands, would remain despite the unstable mode of governance. Consequently, there was a real distinction between the peoples who lived on the plain and the populations who inhabited the mountains. Thus, Edmund Leach contrasted the “Hill peoples” to the “Valley peoples”, while Georges Condominas used variations on the term “civilization” to differentiate between the “civilization of mountains and the civilization of the plains” (Condominas 1980, p. 185).