cabinet includes a commissioner for Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs. The public
rhetoric of the Chinese Communist Party, moreover, consistently referred to
the loss of territory in the north under so-called “unequal treaties,” implying
that the independence of Outer Mongolia was a part of this general phenomenon.
14 Siam changed its name to Thailand in 1939 partly to lay the basis for a
broader nationalist dream of incorporating all Tai peoples into a single state, but
Laos was always a special focus of Thai irredentism. The Thai were never reconciled
to the loss of two territories on the west bank of the Mekong River in
1904. After the fall of France to Germany in 1940, Thailand immediately
moved to recover these ‘lost’ territories west of the river and was persistent in
its efforts to draw Laos into the Thai economic sphere of influence.15 In Thailand,
moreover, the cultural differences between the heartland around Bangkok
and most of the outlying regions were relatively small, and there was a strong
tendency to see regional identities—including the identity of the Lao in the
northeast—as variations on a Thai theme rather than as distinct minority cultures.
16 From a Thai point of view, there would be few cultural obstacles to incorporating
the Lao in a larger Thai state.