Laos and America-A Retrospective View

The farmers in a certain section of the U.S. seemed implicitly to divide human beings into three categories: scenery, machinery, and people.In the first category they grouped Indians on the nearby reservation, who could be seen on a Sunday drive and from whom souvenirs could be bought.In the second category were migrant farm laborers who had to be maintained-fed, housed, and supervised.In the people category they placed neighbors, relatives, and friends with whom they socidized and went to church, and with whose children theirs went to school.The peoples of Laos have been viewed by the Western world mostly as enchanting scenery and, more recently, as rather poor machinery.The French were early smitten with the human scenery, and in a travel account published in 1868 Henri Mouhot depicted the Lao as q ~~e t , submissive, patient, temperate, trusting, credulous, superstitious, faithful, simple, and naYve.Needless to say, he declared the women beautiful.Auguste Pavie, the man most responsible for French colonization of Laos, found the capital of the Kingdom of Luang Frabang s delightful place in which to make his borne for several years.Until the end of the French coIonial period Laos continued to be regarded as a kind of Shangri-la remote from the problems of the world, In. recent years journalists covering politicaI crises have succumbed perhaps less to the charm than to the stereotype and have described the Lao as irresponsible and carefree.Human beings as ill-fuhctioning machinery began to enter the picture during the 1960-1961 civil war.This was particularIy true when the poor showing of the Royal Lao Army was attributed

Citation · Download · Icon · Information retrieval · Library science · World Wide Web · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Computer Science · History · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

• Introduction

  H High, Pierre Petit•Asian Studies Review•2013

  Add to list