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Champasak: Another Forgotten State?

© John Walsh

The southern Laos town of Paksé is a sleepy place of some 20,000 people without, it is said, a bar or a night club of any type. It is most commonly visited these days as a stop on the way to Wat Phu, which is a Khmer style Buddhist landmark that dates back to the C6th CE. Yet Paksé is the former capital of Champasak which was for a couple of hundred years an independent state with a strong tradition of its own. Champasak people believe they are heirs to a proud intellectual heritage and a distinctive identity quite the equal of that of Vientiane or Luang Phrabang.

The known history of Champasak is based to a great extent on the annals used by Archaimbault to create what is still considered to be the definitive history in 1961.

The first king of which we have knowledge is King Khajanam, who reigned around 1550. However, it is successors such as King Soysisamount (r.1713-37) and King Sayakoummane (r.1738-91) that really saw the creation of Champasak as a state. It was in these reigns that saw the creation of a new capital on the island of Khong in the middle of the Mekong river and the reorganization of the administration of the state along more modern lines. As has been the case of states within mainland Southeast Asia throughout history, the importance and influence of a state did not depend upon its geographical or political borders but on the mutual ties of kinship and recognition that it could mobilize across the region. Champasak rulers were able in this regard and the state, although constantly low on manpower and hence unable to pose much of a military threat, was acknowledged to be an important part of mainland politics.

Recognising the importance of the location of Champasak, King Taksin of Siam made efforts to bring it into the Siamese sphere of influence. An opportunity presented itself when King Sayakoummane gave refuge to two ministers who had fled Vientiane and wished to establish their own state near what is today Udon Thani named Nong Bua Lamphu. The ministers subsequently fell out with Sayakoummane who therefore failed to protect them against an army from Vientiane. The son of one of the ministers appealed to their former suzerain, Taksin of Siam, who then sent an army to punish Champasak, on the basis that Sayakoummane had reneged on his familial responsibilities to the son, although the king seems in fact to have done nothing wrong. These complicated arrangements are characteristic of the nature of politics in Southeast Asia which depended on these personal ties, which are often combined with Buddhist principles. In any case, Champasak was henceforth brought firmly into the Siamese world and Siam made sure it did not become sufficiently powerful to exert its own influence in opposition to Siam.