"The Kingdom of Laos was in a very unique position during the Second World War. The reasons behind this are due mostly to the position Laos had in the French colonial empire. For most of their history, the people of Laos had been divided into a number of small and shifting kingdoms or what were effectively city-states, traditionally dominated much of the time by the Kingdom of Thailand. There were also periods of Burmese invasions and extended raids by the Chinese and some Lao rulers occasionally had to pay court to the Vietnamese but the region remained essentially divided into at least three city-states. Then, one fateful day, the French arrived. When the King of Luang Prabang was driven out by Chinese renegades, the French (who were already established in Vietnam) came to his rescue and established a protectorate over the region. In quick order the states of Champasak and Vientiane became protectorates as well as the French united them all into the Kingdom of Laos under the ruler of Luang Prabang, King Sisavang Vong. This was a man who showed great integrity and never forgot that, when he was at his lowest point, had lost his kingdom and been driven from his throne, that it was the French who helped him get it all back and more.
Within French Indochina, Laos was treated with relatively benign neglect. There were, of course, occasions of resistance to the French presence but, on the whole, the French treated the Lao people more like charming simpletons who had to be cared for rather than property to be exploited (that was done elsewhere). The French also seemed unassailable; they had taken control of the whole of Vietnam, rested Cambodia from Thailand and suppressed every challenge to their authority. All of that changed with the outbreak of World War II, the conquest of France by Germany and the subsequent attack on French Indochina by the Kingdom of Thailand. The Royal Thai Army overran most of Laos in quick order and though the subsequent treaty, brokered by Japan, saw French authority restored, Laos did lose several provinces in the south to Thailand and all of French Indochina was occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army. What was very worrisome to Laos was that the dictator of Thailand, who was soon to become an official ally of Japan, Marshal Phibun, had declared his intention to re-unite all Thai peoples under his rule and by "all Thai peoples" he meant the people of Laos as well.
Since Laos was not considered very strategically important, the Japanese garrison was rather small and while the Japanese allowed the French colonial regime to remain in power, there was no love lost between the two sides. The Japanese leadership had stressed that this was a racial war, a pan-Asian movement to eradicate the ‘white skinned devils' and the French never expected the peace to be indefinite. In those parts of Indochina where French colonial rule was most unpopular, this was a significant threat. The Japanese enjoyed forcing the French to bow and scrape to them and, in Vietnam for example, the locals liked seeing it as well and many Vietnamese began peppering their speech with Japanese phrases, a clear sign of who was really in charge. The French Governor-General of Indochina, Admiral Jean Decoux was not willing to do nothing while this was happening and to do what he could to strengthen the French position in areas where resistance had been the least active. French attitudes themselves had also changed with the establishment of the Vichy regime and this played a part as well…"
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