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ABSTRACT
State formation below the national scale remains under-researched. In this article, the reconstitution of the local history of an upland region of Laos – Sepon – reveals a process of state formation from a territorial margin. Contrary to James C. Scott’s thesis on state-evading peoples, members of a local ethnic minority population – the Phuthai – have been part of the making of the state over centuries. In addition to the material aspects of state-making, this article explores its intangible components that are often neglected in analyses of state formation. This wider lens is particularly applied to the Communist state-making efforts in Sepon during the American-Vietnam War. These have had the unintended consequence of producing a new class that replicates age-old social hierarchies and have resulted in Sepon, and probably other upland areas of contemporary Laos, being more socially inequitable than the Communist Revolution intended.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The ethnic Lao barely constitute the majority, although they are by far the country’s largest ethnic group.
2. For a comprehensive overview, see Tarling (Citation1993).
3. From this point onwards (unless otherwise stated), I will use the term “Sepon” to refer to the pre-1993 area comprising today’s districts of Sepon and Vilabuly.
4. In Vietnam they are called Bru-Vân Kiều, while in Laos, they are classified into two groups, the Makong (or Mangkong) and the Tri.
5. This paper is based on materials collected during fieldwork in the districts of Sepon, Vilabuly, and Phine, all of which are located in the easternmost parts of Savannakhet Province. I first visited the area in 2004, returned in both 2005 and 2006, and again in 2008, 2010, and 2012, totalling 12 months of field research.
6. The term “Zomia” was first coined by van Schendel (Citation2002). He proposed to consider the highlands of Asia, from the western Himalayan Range through the Tibetan Plateau and all the way to the lower end of the peninsular Southeast Asian highlands, as a political and historical entity, significantly different from the usual divisions of Asia: Central (Inner), South, East, and Southeast. In Scott’s book, Zomia covers mainland Southeast Asia, north-eastern India, and south-western China.
7. For a different analysis of historical statelessness among some upland groups in Southeast Asia, see Fiskesjö (Citation2010) on the Wa people on the Burma–China frontier.
8. Nay means “grandmother” in Phuthai; I knew her only by her kinship name. All personal names have been changed.
9. Ban means “village(s)” in Lao.
10. Pathet Lao was the unofficial commonly used name of the Lao Communist forces and leadership until 1975.
11. The US Air Force launched in December 1964 airstrikes against fixed targets and infiltration routes throughout Laos, which soon expanded in April 1965 to a day-and-night air campaign in southern Laos.
12. 2010 Sepon District statistics, collected by the author.
13. The remainder (2.4 per cent) belong to various other ethnic groups (Katang, Lawa, and Ta-Oy).
14. Sivapavat nyo khong phanakngan khu – ajan khong hongkan seuksa muang Vilabuly [“Short Biographies of Teaching Civil Servants – Teachers of Vilabuly Education Office”], Savannakhet Provincial Education Department, Citation2008–Citation2009. To be sure, this is not a complete picture of the state structure; what is in particular missing here is the ethnicity of the army and police personnel. These data unfortunately are still inaccessible to foreign scholars.
15. The Lao are over represented because most of them came with their families after 1975 to meet the need for educated officials in Sepon.
16. I also encountered this version of Phuthai history through my interviews with elderly Phuthai villagers.
17. See Le Failler (Citation2011) and Bouté (Citation2011).
18. In 1943, 9,508 pupils were enrolled in elementary schools (grades 1–6) out of a population of 403,200 children aged below 15, that is, the equivalent of roughly 2.3 per cent (Halpern Citation1964, 189 (for the first figure); Pietrantoni Citation1953, 2 (for the second figure)).
19. Liste dénominative des instituteurs en service dans le muong de Tchépone, Archives nationales d’outre-mer (ANOM), Résidence Supérieure du Laos, dossier F14, 7 janvier 1947, Chao Muong de Tchépone. I was unable to identify the ethnic origins of the population of the two other villages, Ban Ban Bung and Ban Namkapo.
20. And interviews with villagers in Sepon and Vilabuly districts, September–November 2008. Tasseng was an administrative unit situated below the district level.
21. Interviews with fifty teachers (some of whom have retired), who were trained during and/or in the aftermath of the American-Vietnam War, Sepon District, February–April 2010.
22. There were 141 rural schools (grades 1–3) for approximately 1,100 villages in Savannakhet Province in 1956 (Halpern Citation1961, 2).
23. Paul Langer pointed out in his 1971 report that “[i]n the first years after the creation of a separate Communist school system in the late 1950s, anyone with some knowledge of reading, writing, and arithmetic was considered a potential candidate for instructor status” (Langer Citation1971, 19).
24. His former pupils include several district chiefs, the first female mayor of Kaysone Phomvihane (the capital city of Savannakhet Province), the former mayor of Vientiane, and the head of the provincial education department.
25. In August of 1975, troops of the Lao People’s Army entered Vientiane and the major provincial cities, including Savannakhet. A few days later, on 2 December 1975, the founding of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic was proclaimed.
26. For peasant resistance against rural collectivization programs in Laos, see Taillard (Citation1983).
27. In fact, the eleven-member Politburo is remarkably diverse ethnically, also counting in its ranks leaders of Hmong, Katang, and Khmu ethnic origins. Whether their promotion to the Politburo is the result of wartime political change in the uplands, the outcome of deeper historical dynamics or, more straightforwardly, down to individual achievement, is a matter worthy of further research.
28. On the other hand, the Bru, who were as much mobilized during the war (if not more so, mostly as soldiers or porters) (Vargyas Citation2000), have been to a great extent excluded from state power. Their disillusionment is shared by members of upland populations elsewhere in Laos and Vietnam who likewise have been missed out on the benefits of the Revolution (Pholsena Citation2006; Evrard Citation2011; Salemink Citation2015). The fate of the Bru will be a subject for further research.
29. Evidence of this is provided in Bouté (Citation2011) and my own research in the south-eastern province of Sekong.