Søren Ivarsson

• A unique, multidisciplinary discussion of the cultural, historical, political, religious and legal forces that formed the Thai monarchy.
• Essential reading for anyone interested in Thai politics and culture.
• Of interest to a broad readership, also outside academia.

The quest by Laos to balance its economic transformation with retention of national stability and one-party rule involves the regime in 2 balancing acts: first to please neighbours and donors; second to ride the economic whirlwind without tumbling from power.

This book argues that the historiography of Laos needs also to be understood in this wider context. Not only do the contributors consider how the Lao have written their own nationalist and revolutionary history ‘on the inside’, they also examine how others – the French, Vietnamese, and Thais – have tried to write the history of Laos ‘from the outside’ for their own political ends.

This book examines the uncertain process through which a specific idea about a separate ‘Lao space’ and its culture was formed and Laos came into existence under French colonial rule. Here, Laos’s position at the intersection of two conflicting spatial layouts of ‘Thailand’ and ‘Indochina’ made its national form a particularly contested process.