However, the forced relocation of Lao-speaking people to Thailand would have an adverse impact in the post-war era, when nationalistic sentiments grew strong. Former rulers of Thailand might not have predicted that the population of Lao-speaking Thais would have grown to outnumber Thai-speaking Thais on the Thai side of the Mekong, and that the Lao-speaking communities were dispersed across north-eastern Thailand, a region popularly known as Isan. It is striking to note that by 1960 Lao-speaking Thais comprised one-third of the country's population. Interestingly enough, the number of Lao-speaking people in Thailand was at least six times greater than that in Laos itself.