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CHAPTER 2 Interventions from Afar ◆ Nonspiritual Powers in Place In this chapter my primary aim is to ascertain the impact that accompanied Thai, French,and then American interventions not only politically but in terms of transformations of the religious culture beginning in the early decades of nineteenth century and continuing through to the end of the Second Indochina War in 1975. As before I will periodically include comparative observations with Sri Lanka. Politics and Religion in Nineteenth-Century “Siamese Laos” During the nineteenth century the powerful Bangkok-centered Chakri dynasty constrained any Lao aspirations for greater autonomy. Its control over remnants of the Lan Xang mandala was threatened on only two occasions. During the 1830s the Siamese counteracted Vietnamese influence and potential military incursions in the mountainous northeast Huaphan region and in the Xieng Khuang plateau, regions that had paid tribute traditionally to both Luang Phrabang and to Hue (Vietnam). In facing the Vietnamese challenge on Xieng Khuang’s Plain of Jars, the Siamese resorted once again to their practice of enforced mass dispersal and relocation. Thousands of Phuan Buddhist1 families were relocated to the Khorat plateau in northeast Thailand, there to join other Lao peoples from Vientiane regions who had been displaced there a few years earlier.2 Then in the last two decades of the nineteenth century Chinese Haw marauders swept across much of northern Laos. Itinerant, militant, and greatly feared, the Haw were stubborn survivors of the failed millenarian Taiping rebellion in China.3 Unable to control these intrusions and banditry,the Siamese failed to defend Luang Phrabang,which suffered a devastating sacking,4 an event that proved to have prodigious political consequences. While these two instances of political instability only partially mitigated Siamese hegemony in the northern areas formerly constitutive of Lan Xang, another important process was at work that indirectly worked against Siamese efforts to 76 Nonspiritual Powers in Place 77 consolidate their influence.This was the process of modernization itself, so clearly apparent in Bangkok during the mid-century reign of King Mongkut and in the late-century rule of King Chulalongkorn. Modernization came to the Bangkok court as a result of increasing exposure to Western forms of knowledge, mounting international trade, the introduction of new forms of weaponry, and, perhaps most importantly, the concept of boundaried nation-states. These forces widened the social, economic, and cultural gaps between Bangkok and its peripheral vassals in Laos. Indeed, the political concept of mandala was jettisoned by the end of the century, with the ascendant concept of the boundaried nation-state taking its place.Though Siamese royalty publicly claimed that the Lao mandala were part of Siam (Ivarsson 2003: 242), Champasak and Luang Phrabang, the most peripheral of all, did not participate significantly in the processes producing the newly emergent modern national Thai identity.5 As Evans (2002b: 37) puts the matter: “The collapse of Lan Xang exaggerated the difference between the increasingly worldly and sophisticated Siamese and the increasingly parochial Lao courts.” Nor does it seem that the Lao sangha was much affected by royal Siamese attempts to reform the Buddhist monastic system.6 These reforms,designed to make the sangha more attuned to the modern world, were also influenced by Western conceptions of religion and scientific rationality. They were enacted to establish a monastic vocation that was more scholastically oriented, ethically rational, and consciously aware of discipline (for example, the Vinaya). A “new monk’s” education in preparation for the full upasampada ordination included emphases on mastering Pali and systematically studying the Theravada Tipitaka. A rigorous academic examination system was put into place, designed to test the knowledge requisite of monks to be ordained. Subsequent advancement up the sangha hierarchy depended upon continuing demonstrations of academic knowledge. Ritual knowledge of the spirit world, and the ontological assumptions on which it is based,was ignored,if not discouraged.This was understood as a recovery of“true” or “original” Buddhism, of a purified monasticism uncontaminated by popular religious culture, and Bangkok’s royalty institutionalized this reformed Buddhist sangha with the establishment of a new elite institution: the Thammayut Nikay. The influence of the Thammayut in nineteenth-century Laos, however, was minimal , though later in the twentieth century it had an important impact upon segments of the Lao sangha. For the time being, however, the Lao monastic vocation , as it had been long practiced in Luang Phrabang and in rural Lao villages, remained innocent of the grand new monastic paradigm being promulgated in Bangkok. Thus most Lao...

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