Flag

• 1. Introduction

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  A flag is a piece of fabric, most often rectangular, carrying distinctive colours and a design, flown from a pole for symbolic, signalling, or decorative purposes. The oldest one ever discovered is not cloth at all. It is bronze. Found at Shahdad in Iran and dated to around 2400 BC, it shows a seated man and a kneeling woman facing each other, with a star between them. How did a battlefield aid for coordinating troops become the most recognisable patriotic symbol a country can own? Why do sailors still treat a strip of dyed fabric as a matter that can mean the difference between life and death? And what does it mean that a study exists for this object alone, called vexillology, from the Latin vexillum? The answers run from predynastic Egypt to a flag in Doha that covered more than a hundred thousand square metres.

• 2. Ancient Origins

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  Ships carrying vexilloids appear on predynastic Egyptian pottery from around 3500 BC, long before anyone agrees a true flag was raised. Field signs that scholars call vexilloid or flag-like grew out of warfare in ancient Egypt or Assyria. The Sassanid battle standard Derafsh Kaviani belongs to this family, as do the standards of the Roman legions. The eagle of Augustus Caesar's Xth legion is one example. The dragon standard of the Sarmatians is another, carried by a horseman and allowed to fly freely in the wind. Depictions suggest it looked less like a simple flag and more like an elongated dragon kite. Cloth flags were almost certainly invented by the ancient peoples of the Indian subcontinent or the Zhou dynasty of Ancient China. Chinese flags bore a red bird, a white tiger, or a blue dragon, and royal flags were to be treated with respect close to that given the ruler. Indian flags were often triangular, decorated with attachments such as a yak's tail and the state umbrella. Silk flags, or the silk itself, may have spread to the Near East from China before reaching Europe through the Muslim world, where plainly coloured flags suited Islamic proscriptions.

• 3. The European Tradition

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  In the Roman world, the vexillum was a cloth military flag, and Schmöger calls it the only Roman cloth flag and the root of the modern European flag tradition. It served as a cavalry flag, a detachment flag, a signal flag, an imperial standard, a religious flag, and a provincial symbol. The Christian Roman labarum, first used by Constantine in the 4th century, was a version of the vexillum, usually hung from a horizontal bar but sometimes fastened by one side to the staff. In medieval Europe, flags developed alongside warfare, Christianity, heraldry, monarchy, cities, guilds, and maritime identification. English heraldic usage drew careful distinctions: pennons were personal lance flags, banners bore the arms of the owner, and standards displayed livery colours and badges. Elgenius describes national flags as markers of nation-building in the modern period, especially after the political changes of 1789. During the sailing age, beginning in the early 17th century, ships were expected and later legally required to fly flags showing their nationality. One national flag was born from rebellion. The flag of the Netherlands appeared during the 80-year Dutch revolt that began in 1568 against Spanish domination.

• 4. Families Of Flags

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  The flag of Denmark, the Dannebrog, is attested in 1478 and is the oldest national flag still in use, and its cross inspired Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland, and others. The flag of the Netherlands is the oldest tricolour, its red, white, and blue tracing back to Charlemagne's time in the ninth century, when the coastal region was known for cloth in those colours. It first appeared as state flag around 1572 as the Prince's Flag in orange-white-blue, with the red-white-blue version becoming prevalent from around 1630. The Dutch tricolour is said to have inspired the flags of Russia, New York City, and South Africa, and it is the source of the pan-Slavic colours adopted by Slovakia, Serbia, and Slovenia. The national flag of France, designed in 1794, set a tricolour style adopted by Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Romania, and Mexico. The Union Flag of the United Kingdom is the most commonly used, with former colonies such as Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and Tuvalu retaining ensign-based designs. The flag of the United States, nicknamed The Stars and Stripes or Old Glory, was imitated by Liberia, Chile, Taiwan, and the French region of Brittany. Ethiopia, one of the oldest independent states in Africa, gave the Pan-African colours to Benin, Togo, Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and Guinea. The flag of Turkey passed its crescent to Algeria, Azerbaijan, Comoros, Libya, Pakistan, and others. The Pan-Arab colours of green, white, red, and black come from the Great Arab Revolt. The flag of Venezuela, created by Francisco de Miranda, shaped the flags of Colombia and Ecuador, while the flag of Argentina, created by Manuel Belgrano, led to those of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

• 5. Flags Of Land And State

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  A civil flag is a version of the national flag flown by civilians on non-government installations or craft, once common to mark buildings or ships not crewed by the military. In Spain the civil flag is the state flag without the coat of arms. War flags tell a different story. The Royal Air Force, British Army, and Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, with its White Ensign, have flown unique flags separate from the national flag, as did the Soviet Union. The Philippines flies its national flag upside down during times of war, and Bulgaria does the same. Large versions of a war flag flown on warships are known as battle ensigns, while a Naval Jack and other maritime flags are flown at the bow. A white flag, by contrast, is a banner of truce, talks, or surrender. Four distinctive African flags now held by the National Maritime Museum in Britain were flown in action by Itsekiri ships under Nana Olomu during conflict in the late 19th century. One is generally known as the Benin Empire flag and one as Nana Olomu's flag. Among international flags are those of the United Nations, Europe, the Olympics, NATO, and the Paralympics.

• 6. Rules Of The Sea

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  At sea the rules for flying flags are strictly enforced, because a flag there can mean the difference between life and death. A national flag flown at sea is called an ensign. A peaceable merchant ship or yacht flies its own ensign together with the flag of whatever nation it is visiting, known as a courtesy flag. To fly one's ensign alone in foreign waters, a foreign port, or before a foreign warship traditionally signals a willingness to fight, with cannon, for the right to do so. Many naval and port authorities still take this seriously, enforcing it by boarding, confiscation, and other civil penalties. In some countries yacht ensigns differ from merchant ensigns to show the yacht carries no cargo needing a customs declaration, and carrying commercial cargo under a yacht ensign counts as smuggling in many jurisdictions. A vessel flying a nation's courtesy flag is traditionally considered to operate under the law of her host nation. International maritime signal flags assign a meaning to each flag for numerals and letters, while semaphore flags can communicate ship to ship over short distances. Some United States government ships fly a distinctive mark from a forward mast, and today commissioned ships of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fly the NOAA flag as theirs.

• 7. Shape Color And Scale

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  Flags usually appear in the ratio 2:3, 1:2, or 3:5, but the flag of Nepal breaks the rectangle entirely, taking the shape of two stacked triangles. Other unusual shapes include the swallowtail civil flag of Ohio and the flags of Tampa, Florida, and Pike County, Ohio. Many flags are dyed through and through so the reverse is the mirror image of the obverse, which raises a problem when a design is not symmetrical, since the hoist then sits on opposite sides front and back. A few flags, including the flag of Paraguay, the flag of Oregon, and the historical flag of the Soviet Union, carry a reverse that genuinely differs from the front. A coat of arms may be flown as a banner of arms, as on the state flag of Maryland and the flag of Kiribati. The de jure flag of Libya under Muammar Gaddafi was a plain green field, for a long time the only national flag using a single colour and no insignia, though the Soviet Republic of Hungary and the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman both flew a plain field of red. Scale reached extremes in the desert. According to Guinness World Records, the largest flag flown from a flagpole is the flag of the United Arab Emirates in Sharjah at 2448.56 square metres, while the largest flag ever made was the flag of Qatar, measuring 101,978 square metres and completed in December 2013 in Doha.

• 8. The Working Flag

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  A checkered flag of black and white squares ends an auto or motorcycle race and signals victory for the leader, while a yellow flag calls for caution, a red flag stops racers immediately, and a black flag marks penalties. Sport leans on flags everywhere. In association football linesmen raise a flag for an offside offence, and in American football referees toss a small weighted handkerchief, yellow in the American game and orange in Canadian football, in the call known as flag on the play. In Gaelic football and hurling a green flag marks a goal and a white flag a point, and in Australian rules football the goal umpire waves two flags for a goal worth six points and one flag for a behind worth one. Beaches carry their own code. In Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Philippines, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, paired red and yellow flags mark the bathing area guarded by surf lifesavers, and crossed poles mean the beach is closed. Railways speak in colour too, where red means stop, yellow means proceed with caution, and a blue flag on a locomotive means it must not be moved because someone is working on it. That principle of blue flag and tag, extended to all operations at Bethlehem Steel in Lackawanna, New York, became the lock out tag out practice now used across other industries to meet safety regulations. The reach of the flagpole grew skyward to match: since the 26th of December 2021 the tallest free-standing flagpole in the world is the Cairo Flagpole at 201.952 metres, in the New Administrative Capital under construction in Egypt.