I’m amazed this hasn’t been asked - I tried a search but the nearest I could find was this thread, which just explains why so many of the Slavic flags have those colors.
How about the US Flag, the British one, the French one, the Dutch one… ?
I realize the colors are often symbolic (red for blood of the Revolution etc.) but why does that combination occur so frequently? Or am I just imagining it and it doesn’t occur any more frequently than other combinations?
(related: why certain colors never seem to appear, e.g. pink?)
I can only say why the French flag is blue-white-red; why so many other nations carry those colours I do not know; maybe they didn’t, and every flag has its own history, and it’s coincidence why they have those colours in common.
Red and blue are the colours of the city of Paris, and white was the colour of the Bourbon royal dynasty ruling France before the Revolution. Therefore the French national colour was white until 1789, when King Louis XVI, as a symbol for his loyalty towards the people of France in general and Paris in particular, added the Paris colours to his white outfit, creating the well-known revolutionary tricolore cockade.
The Union Jack history is the story of combining three single flags (England, Scotland, Ireland) into one, so I don’t think there is any connection between the British flag and the French Revolution (I’m pretty sure usage of the Union Jack antedates the Revolution).
The US flag derived AFAIK from the flag of the British East India Company (the English red cross in the canton and horizontal red stripes on the rest of the flag, later on the English flag was replaced by the Union Jack. This in the beginning of the American Revlution also was in use as the revolutionary flag).
Remember that Cecil column where he talked about the number of words for colors in a language. All languages have black and white, and then red is the third color, if they have more than two words for colors. Then yellow/green, then blue. I’m going to go look for the column, but I bet that’s part of the reason.
Flags were invented by cultures that already had a rich color vocabulary, so that doesn’t seem to be connected to the reason for certain colors being more popular than others.
On the other hand, red and blue are two of the easiest colors to acheive with natural dyes. You can make them vivid and they don’t fade as quickly as most other natural colors. They make a striking, pleasing combination of colors, and remain distinct at a distance. I suspect these practical reasons explain much of their popularity.
I was under the impression that alot of the flags were derived from the french flag after the french revolution. IAMA french revolution expert, but didn’t their success give other countries the confidence to do the same?
>> I was under the impression that alot of the flags were derived from the french flag after the french revolution. IAMA french revolution expert, but didn’t their success give other countries the confidence to do the same?
Sort of the other way around. The British flag was the first. The USA borrowed the colors from them and then the French borrowed from the US.
The fundamental reason is surely to do with the close connection with heraldry, which also uses a restricted number of basic colours. In some early cases, such as the St. George’s flag of England, the heraldic connection is obvious, but even for more recent examples, such as Stars and Strips or the French tricolour, notions of good heraldic design were a discernible influence. Most national flags still have simple designs using heraldic colours. The red-white-and-blue combination may be the most popular, but that is partly because, with only a restricted range of colours, the number of simple, appealing combinations is limited. The sort of practical explanations given above by flodnak also applied to heraldry.
for different countries.
In the US flag it is as if the stars are actually stars in a blue sky.
Did you note that blue in the American flag is a different shade than the French royal blueprobably has a different connotation as well.
To quote APB, “The red-white-and-blue combination may be the most popular, but that is partly because, with only a restricted range of colours, the number of simple, appealing combinations is limited.”
To go further in the same direction, I believe red and and blue are the colors most frequently listed as peoples’ favorites. White is the logical choice to set off red and blue.
Thanks for the answers everyone. This board is one of the last refuges for the intelligent on the Internet.
The only reasoning I can think of that would explain why such dissimilar, a priori unrelated countries would all “happen” to choose those three colors seems to be the one first expressed by APB - the connection with heraldry.
I guess red and blue are very striking colors, and white just seems a natural third. (Although - why not the primary colors - red, green and blue? Actually isn’t there a different set of primary colors for pigment than for light?)
The US flag intentionally took the colors of the British flag. Later Lafayette, who had fought for US independence, used the same colors when designing the French flag. While there are explanations of what the colors stand for, they are made up a posteriori. I have found this to be the case with many flags and symbols where people try to find symbolism after the emblem is already in use. The US flag is an exception in that the symbolism of the states in the stars and stripes and of British heritage in the colors, was intended.
You’re not imagining it, but I’m as baffled as you. By my count, the red white and blue are flown by 26 countries: Australia, Cambodia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, France, Iceland, North Korea, Laos, Liberia, Luxembourg, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Russia, Samoa, Slovakia, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Yugoslavia. Make that 27 if we count Taiwan as a sovereign state, which it is for most practical purposes. (I’m not counting those countries that have red, white and blue mixed in with one or more other colors).
The next most common color combos are red and white, flown by 16 countries. Then comes green, red and white, flown by 11 countries.
It’s not that there aren’t enough combinations; I count 61 different color combinations currently being flown by about 193 sovereign states. Why red, white and blue account for about 14% of those flags, I can’t tell you.