# Laos in the World: a 1953 Lao map with two lines drawn outward

A Lao-language world map filed with the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia, catalog date 8 May 1953. Laos carries a red flag, only the United States and France are shaded blue, and two lines run from Laos to those two countries, over the caption "Laos in the world" (NAID 5730166).

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- Laos in the World: a 1953 Lao map with two lines drawn outward

      ປະເທດລາວໃນໂລກ (Laos in the World) (Lao poster distributed in Laos)

      Laos in the World: a 1953 Lao map with two lines drawn outward
      A 1953 USIA world map for Laos shades only France and the United States and draws two lines to them from a flagged Laos. Lao caption, NAID 5730166.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Card stacking
      DateMay 8, 1953Made byU.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia seriesMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeEisenhower AdministrationNARANAID 5730166; Record Group 306SourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), Record Group 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work; NARA RG 306) U.S. Information Agency / Department of State, May 8, 1953. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 5730166, 306-PPA-265).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A Lao-language world map filed with the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia, catalog date 8 May 1953. Laos carries a red flag, only the United States and France are shaded blue, and two lines run from Laos to those two countries, over the caption "Laos in the world" (NAID 5730166).

## The map

The projection puts the Pacific at the centre. Laos is picked out with a red flag. Of every country on the map, two are filled in blue, France and the United States, and a line runs from Laos to each. The other labels name continents, oceans and countries in small Lao script. A single caption sits at the foot.

ປະເທດລາວໃນໂລກ

[map labels in Lao script, including names of continents, oceans and countries, and the two arrowed route lines; only the large labels are legible]

[English, as given by the archive:] Laos in the world

Transcription and translation in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked; the archive labels the English a machine translation not verified by a fluent reader and does not transcribe the small map labels. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 5730166, local id 306-PPA-265.

## Where it sits

The poster is in Record Group 306 at the National Archives, among the U.S. Information Agency's posters distributed in Asia, with a catalog date of 8 May 1953, the day after the Indonesian Flags of the United Nations chart in the same file. FRAME's maker line names the agency and its State Department predecessor program. Nothing on the transcribed face names a sender; the source is classed as blurred. The archive records the purpose as "Persuade or win support" and the theme as war and the military.

## What a map leaves out

A map looks like plain information, and most of this one is. The argument is in the colouring. FRAME tags it card stacking: of all the nations drawn, only two are shaded and joined to Laos, so the reader is shown those ties as the ones that count. The sheet does not say why, and it does not have to. The lines say it.

What the reader is not shown matters as much. No neighbor of Laos is shaded. No line runs to any Asian country. The poster states no claim that could be wrong, which also means it makes no claim a Lao reader could test. A sheet that relied on its colours and named its sender would be easier to weigh. This one does the first and not the second.

Maps were a recurring tool in this file. The 1954 Come South poster split Vietnam at the 17th parallel and coloured the halves grey and green, and a 1958 Baghdad Pact map shaded the pact's Muslim members green and the USSR and China red. A later Lao sheet in the file, Lao poster No. 3, turned to a domestic subject. The U.S. Information Agency hub sets out the program as a whole.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, ປະເທດລາວໃນໂລກ (Laos in the World) (Lao poster distributed in Laos), catalog date 8 May 1953. U.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia series.

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, NAID 5730166 (306-PPA-265), retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/laos-in-the-world-map-lao-1953/