Article

Laos

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Laos

Scope and Historical Definition

The term Laos in the late nineteenth-century Siamese context referred not to a unified political entity but to a loosely defined frontier interior stretching from the upper Chao Phraya basin north-eastward to the Mekong tributaries, inhabited by Laotian-speaking populations under Siamese suzerainty. The most detailed surviving account of this region in the Society’s literature is the day-by-day journal of G. Dabin, a French Catholic missionary of the Missions Étrangères de Paris, who traversed the Siamese-Lao frontier interior over 48 days in February–March 1884, travelling from Bangkok to Ubon on the Seimoun, a tributary of the Mekong [1, pp. 103–104]. Dabin’s narrative, translated into English by W. E. Maxwell and submitted through the Revd. N. J. Couvreur at Singapore, was published in response to the Society’s 1883 Annual Report appeal for observations from French missionaries in the East [1, p. 117]. The text presents the region as a vast, sparsely populated forest landscape punctuated by scattered villages, rudimentary administrative outposts, and the occasional major ruin [1, pp. 104–105].

Administrative and Commercial Structures

Dabin’s account illuminates the minimal Siamese administrative apparatus operating in the Laotian interior. Provincial boundaries were marked by what he terms a douane—a custom-house consisting of no more than two men in a leaf hut levying a tax on passing carts and bullocks, with no registers or commissioners [1, p. 105]. The road from Kabin to Battambang, originally constructed by a Phya (high Siamese official) to secure communication with the Cambodian provinces subject to Siam, had fallen into disrepair and was being reclaimed by forest, though a French-built telegraph line from Saigon to Bangkok, erected in 1884, ran along its entire length [1, pp. 106–107]. Commercial traffic was carried by Cambodian and Burmese caravans trading in gambier, skins, silk, and cloth, as well as by Chinese traders from Sourin [1, pp. 106–107]. A Cambodian mandarin, identified as the son of Phya Anuphat and second mandarin of Siem-rab, was encountered travelling with three elephants, two of which were destined as presents for the King of Siam in exchange for expected favours [1, pp. 107–108]. The governor of the province of Vathana, of Laotian race and about sixty years old, administered a population of two or three hundred houses scattered in the forest, predominantly Cambodian [1, p. 108].

Material Culture and the Ruins of Puthai-saman

The most substantial passage in Dabin’s journal concerns the ruins of Puthai-saman, which he describes as “Angkor-vat on a reduced scale” [1, p. 109]. The complex is built as a complete square, enclosed by a moat thirty to forty metres wide, its banks composed of enormous blocks of Bien-hoa stone sloping at approximately forty-five degrees [1, p. 109]. Colossal seated statues of Siva flank the eastern causeway; Dabin measured a fragment from lower lip to crown at 0.60 m, with an ear-to-ear distance of 0.50 m [1, p. 110]. The inner structures are built entirely of fitted stone blocks, with no trace of timber, lime, or iron; a single block required, in his estimation, ten men to lift [1, p. 110]. Bas-reliefs depicting the fabulous births of Buddha cover the inner surface of a wall forty to fifty metres long and three to four metres high, still in good preservation [1, p. 110]. Dabin notes that the outer surfaces of the buildings are generally finished while the interiors are barely commenced, a feature he attributes to the work having been abandoned before completion [1, p. 111]. Local tradition, he records, ascribes the buildings to the work of angels [1, p. 112].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Laos remains limited to this single primary-source account. Dabin’s journal, published in 1885, represents the earliest and most detailed first-hand description of the Siamese-Lao frontier interior to appear in the Society’s pages. Its value lies in the granular, day-by-day recording of infrastructure, administrative practice, and material hardship, rather than in systematic ethnography or political analysis. The text reflects the missionary’s contemporary framing of Laotian peoples as “savage tribes” requiring conversion [1, p. 103], a perspective that limits its utility as an ethnographic source but preserves an unmediated record of travel conditions, commercial networks, and the physical landscape. No subsequent papers in the Society’s literature are attested in the present record as having extended or corrected Dabin’s observations.

MBRAS Sources

Description and travel

References

  1. G. Dabin and W.E. Maxwell (1885). A missionary’s journey through Laos from Bangkok to Ubon (.E. Maxwell JSBRAS 15: 103–117.