Who ruled Luang Prabang?

Luang Prabang is a small city on the Mekong River in north-central Laos. Known in earlier times as Muang Sua and Xieng Thong, it was the first capital of the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, founded in the fourteenth century, and later the seat of the kings of Luang Prabang, whose line became the monarchy of modern Laos. With more than thirty Buddhist monasteries set among wooden Lao houses and French colonial buildings, its old town is a World Heritage Site.

The upper Mekong valley lay within the world of the Mon city-states by about the eighth century, and Muang Sua, as the town was then called, is listed among their northern settlements. The Khmer later extended their influence up the river, and the town is said to have been under Khmer overlordship in the reign of Jayavarman VII in the late twelfth century. As the Khmer Empire weakened and the Tai kingdom of Sukhothai rose, Muang Sua came under growing Tai influence and then ruled itself as an independent Lao-Tai principality. Its poetic name, Xieng Dong Xieng Thong, means roughly the city of flame trees by the Dong River.

According to the Lao court chronicles, Fa Ngum, a prince of the Muang Sua ruling family who had grown up in exile in the Khmer realm, returned with an army, took the town after several assaults, and was crowned in 1353 as king of Lan Xang, the "land of a million elephants". The Phra Bang, a standing Buddha image said to have come to the Lao court from Angkor through Fa Ngum's Khmer wife, became the kingdom's palladium. Accounts differ on when it reached the capital: one version places the gift in Fa Ngum's time, while the Lan Xang chronicles say it was kept at Vientiane until King Visoun, who reigned from 1500 to 1520, brought it north. Either way, the city took its new name, Luang Prabang, from the image, and it became a centre of Theravada Buddhism.

The city was not always secure. During the invasion of 1478 to 1480 ordered by the Vietnamese emperor Lê Thánh Tông of Đại Việt, his army defeated the Lao forces and occupied Luang Prabang, though the invaders soon withdrew. King Photisarath moved his court to the richer river port of Vientiane in 1533, and in 1560 Setthathirath made Vientiane the formal capital, leaving Luang Prabang the old royal city. The monastery of Wat Xieng Thong was built there at about this time, perhaps to make up for its lost status. Burmese armies overran much of Lan Xang in the 1560s and 1570s before Nokeo Koumane reunited the Lao lands in 1591.

A succession dispute split Lan Xang in 1707 into three kingdoms, with Luang Prabang ruling the north. It was a weak state, forced at different times to accept Burmese and Siamese overlordship, and from 1779 it was a vassal of Siam. In 1887 the Chinese Black Flag Army made a destructive attack on the town during the Haw wars, and King Oun Kham asked for French protection. After France forced Siam to give up the lands east of the Mekong in 1893, Laos became a French protectorate within French Indochina. The administration moved to Vientiane, but the royal family remained at Luang Prabang as figureheads.

The town changed hands repeatedly during the Second World War. Vichy French forces lost it to Thailand after the Franco-Thai War, and Japanese troops of the Empire of Japan occupied it in April 1945, when King Sisavang Vong declared an end to the French protectorate. Free French forces returned in August 1945, and in 1946 French paratroops retook the city from the nationalist Lao Issara government. In 1947 the Lao kingdoms were combined into the Kingdom of Laos, with Sisavang Vong as king, and full independence from France followed in 1953 and 1954. Viet Minh and Pathet Lao forces tried to reach Luang Prabang in 1953 and 1954 but were stopped. The monarchy ended on 2 December 1975, when King Sisavang Vatthana abdicated to the victorious Pathet Lao.

UNESCO inscribed the town on the World Heritage List in 1995, protecting 33 of its 58 villages. Today it serves as capital of Luang Prabang Province in Laos, where the former royal palace is a museum and monks still collect morning alms in the streets.