I saw some reference to a red white and blue flag, and idly wondered what percentage of current national flags fit that description. “A lot” was my guess.
So, my criteria:
Flags must have all 3 colours. Two is not enough. Multiple shades of red or blue are allowable, but didn’t end up being an issue.
Flags must have no other colours, including black. Straight RWB, nothing else, no exceptions.
Current national flags of actual countries, nothing that’s a maybe sort of country. No micronations or other small fry.
So, what’s the count?
22 or 23, depending on whether you count Taiwan, which I do.
Not going to list them because that’d spoil the fun of people who want to check my numbers and argue my definitions.
Huh, I had thought for sure that some of the flags incorporating the Union Jack specified two slightly different shades of blue, but looking up Australia and New Zealand (the two I thought of specifically), this isn’t an issue for either of them. Tuvalu does have two very different shades of blue, but its stars are yellow, which disqualifies it from this discussion (as well as probably the “no micronations” rule).
Anyway, Australia and New Zealand are both on the list, as of course is the UK. And the US, France, and Russia are also pretty obvious.
It’s also kind of surprising how many are just red and white, without the blue, but you already said you weren’t interested in that.
Croatia also has yellow and black on the shieldy things. As a rule of thumb, any flag with coats of arms etc probably has black/yellow/green in small amounts.
This water is muddier than that. A nation may have a civil ensign, a state ensign, a naval ensign and a war ensign, any of which can have the form of a “flag”. Ofte, the basic colors have a device added, such as a coat of arms. Are we counting the flags (e.g. Dominican Republic) which are RWB but usually shown with the coat of arms?
If we stick to generally recognised current nations, we have a couple of hundred, an easy amount to deal with. Though, as I noted with Taiwan, not without some level of controversy.
If we start counting kinda-sorta countries, it’s a slippery slope. If we allow Puerto Rico - which has a very attractive RWB flag - then why not all the other dependencies and similar almost-countries? Why not the Free Territory of Freedomland which also has an attractive RWB flag?
And then why not US states, some of which have larger populations than many smaller countries? And that’s also true of other Federations like Germany and Australia.
And then there’s historic flags like the Confederate flag, or the Republic of Texas. Some fine RWB designs there too, as long as you’re not bothered by what the first one represents. People saluted those flags, they fought and died under them, why not include them too?
Slippery slope. There are probably thousands of different flags that are red white and blue, we can’t count them all.
Okay. I was confused when Chronos referred to Tuvalu as a probably a micronation, since it’s a nation, not a disputed entity. I thought maybe you were excluding microstates.
1 Australia
2 Chile
3 Costa Rica
4 Cuba
5 Czechia
6 France
7 Iceland
8 Nth Korea
9 Laos
10 Liberia
11 Luxembourg
12 Nepal
13 Netherlands
14 New Zealand
15 Norway
16 Panama
17 Russia
18 Samoa
19 Slovakia
20 Thailand
21 UK
22 USA
23 Taiwan
That’s my list, feel free to check for errors and omissions.
Speaking of micronations, there are a few beauties and a lot of WTFs on the Flags of micronations Wiki page. Only 5 of them are Red White & Blue by my count.
