The Kingdom of Champasak (Lao: ຈຳປາສັກ [càmpàːsák]) (1713–1946) broke away from the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang in 1713. It was on the southeastern border of Siam (modern dayThailand,) south of Khong Chiam where the Mun River meets the Mekong, east of where the Mekong makes a sharp bend to the west then returns abruptly to flow southeasterly down to Cambodia. Due to scarcity of information from the periods known as the Dark ages of Cambodia, the Khorat Plateau seems to have been largely depopulated. In 1718, a Lao emigration in the company of an official in the service of King Nokasad of Champasak, founded Muang Suwannaphum as the first recorded population of Lao in the Chi River valley — indeed anywhere in the interior of the plateau. The kingdoms prospered at the beginning the 18th century, but Suwannaphum lost its status and Champasak was reduced to a vassal state of Siam following the failure of the Laotian Rebellion for independence of 1826–29. Following the Franco-Siamese War of 1893, the kingdom fell under French rule as an administrative block, with its royalty stripped of many privileges. The kingdom was abolished in 1946 when it became a province of the newly independent Kingdom of Laos, later the Lao PDR.