Some initial citations for understanding 1945-1962 Laos

Posted on by pstaniland

I’m spending a lot of time right now understanding Laos’ fairly quick descent into militarized polarization during the early Cold War, which occurred much faster than in Cambodia. This is not a case I knew anything about prior to starting the work, so it’s been a really rewarding and interesting experience to hit something genuinely new.

Below are a few books I’ve found useful (with deep debts to the H-Diplo roundtable review of Seth Jacobs’ The Universe Unraveling as a guide):

Christopher E. Goscha and Karine Laplante, eds., L’échec de La Paix En Indochine/The Failure of Peace in Indochina: 1954-1962 (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, 2010)

Martin Stuart-Fox, A History of Laos (Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

MacAlister Brown and Joseph Jermiah Zasloff, Apprentice Revolutionaries: The Communist Movement in Laos, 1930-1985 (Hoover Institution Press, 1986)

William J. Rust, Before the Quagmire: American Intervention in Laos, 1954-1961 (Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 2012)

Nicholas Tarling, Britain and the Neutralisation of Laos (Singapore: NUS Press, 2011)

Martin Stuart-Fox, Buddhist Kingdom, Marxist State: The Making of Modern Laos, 1st ed, Studies in Southeast Asian History, no. 2 (Bangkok ; Cheney: White Lotus, 1996)

Arthur J. Dommen, Conflict in Laos: The Politics of Neutralization, Rev. ed (New York: Praeger, 1971)

Søren Ivarsson, Creating Laos: The Making of a Lao Space between Indochina and Siam, 1860-1945, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series 112 (Copenhagen S, Denmark: NIAS Press, 2008)

Jacob Van Staaveren, Interdiction in Southern Laos, 1960-1968: The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia (Washington, D.C: Center for Air Force History : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O, 1993)

Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Vatthana Pholsena, Post-War Laos: The Politics of Culture, History, and Identity (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2006)

William J. Rust, So Much to Lose: John F. Kennedy and American Policy in Laos, Studies in Conflict, Diplomacy, and Peace (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2014)

Seth Jacobs, The Universe Unraveling: American Foreign Policy in Cold War Laos, Illustrated edition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012)

Jane Hamilton-Merritt, Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993)

Charles A. Stevenson, The End of Nowhere: American Policy toward Laos since 1954 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972)

Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975, First Edition (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000)

Ryan Wolfson-Ford, Forsaken Causes: Liberal Democracy and Anticommunism in Cold War Laos (University of Wisconsin Press, 2024