Red, yellow, and green are known as the pan-African colors. They come from the flag of Ethiopia, the only country in Africa to largely keep its independence during the colonial era. Given that, these colors became very popular when the many former European colonies started gaining their independence after World War II. A little too popular, if you ask me.
Guinea
Guinea was a former French colony, and elected to simply swap the colors of the tricolore with the pan-African ones. Easy.
Mali
Okay. I see Mali’s simply taken Guinea’s flag and flipped it around. Creative!
Senegal
Ooh, look – this one has a little star!
Cameroon
And now for something completely different ... Yup, we’ve got a star, plus we switched the colors all around. Yeah baby!
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Red, white, and black are the traditional colors of the German Empire:
Oddly, though, all the countries in this post are Arab, just like last week. These flags can all be traced back to 1952, when Egypt overthrew their king in favor of a republic. That, in turn, would inspire a whole slew of imitators.
Yemen
Yemen represents the purest (read, “most boring”) expression of this motif.
Iraq
I see Iraq has livened things up by throwing some words on there. I’m guessing these say something like – oh, I don’t know – “Iraq.”
Well, shows what I know. This one actually says allahu akhbar – “God is great.” Huh. Never heard that one before.
Syria
And this one has some little stars (apologies to Doctor Seuss and his Red Fish, Blue Fish). Two of them, to be exact.
Wondering where they came from? Interesting story … Turns out Syria and Egypt were once united, from 1958 to 1962. Egypt (see below) has moved on. Syria? Still pining away, I guess.
Even more interestingly, this was the original flag in this whole set. As you can see, it actually combined the same original colors as in the flags from last week. It’s only when Egypt moved on that green became less central.
Egypt
Egypt has livened things up with the ol’ “eagle of Saladdin.” The ol’ whuh?
So, Saladdin was this Arab dude from the Crusades. He, like, beat up on a bunch of Christians. That’s his shield and stuff.
Alternates
So, anybody up for mixing things up a little (though I'm thinking that might be frowned upon in the Arab world)? How about these two ideas:
Feel free to throw some stars or eagles or writing on either of them.
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More pan colors. This time, though, we’re coming up with something for the countries that came about when the southern part of the Ottoman Empire broke apart (click here to go a little north).
In fact, would you believe there was a flag just for that event? It’s called the flag of the Arab Revolt, and looks like this:
The colors represent the main dynasties of the Muslim caliphate.
Jordan
This one dates all the way back to 1928, not too long after the Arab Revolt itself.
That star, by the way, is an Islamic star. The 7 points all stand for something or other. I forget.
Palestine
Not really a state, but … This flag was adopted in the 1960s by the PLO.
If you’re thinking all they did was take the flag of Jordan and ditch the star, you might be right.
Western Sahara
Never heard of Western Sahara? It used to belong to Spain and is just below Morocco, who rule most of the territory. What they’re not in charge of, these guys are.
If you’re thinking all they did was take the flag of Palestine and thrown in the moon and star – well, once again, you might be right.
Sudan
Though Sudan was not part of the Arab Revolt by a long shot, they decided to go with this cute little number after a coup in 1970. Previously, they had flown this very non-Arab looking thing:
Kuwait
Kuwait adopted this flag only in 1961, when they achieved full independence. Up until that time, they went with an all-red flag with a bunch of writing on it. As far as I know, this one’s the only national flag with that cool trapezoidy thing.
United Arab Emirates
Here’s another one that’s fairly recent – 1971. It was designed by some local dude, one Abdullah Mohammad Al Maainah. He himself admits that “sometimes people have mistaken the UAE flag for another country, because it has the same colours as other Arab countries that adopted the pan-Arab colours of the 1916 Arab revolution.” Well, why didn’t you think of that beforehand, Abdullah?
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Ah, the pan-Slavic colors … Yup, this is our first brush with flags that were purposely meant to look alike and confuse us.
Russia
So, Russia’s the one that started this mess. Their flag dates all the way back to the 17th Century.
There’s a great story that Peter the Great came up with this design based on the flag of the Netherlands, a country which he greatly admired:
Unfortunately, that’s not totally true. The white-blue-red is a traditional color combination in Russia, based on the arms of the Duchy of Moscow. The Dutch influence may have come in the three horizontal stripes though.
That said, the Russian flag would definitely become a strong model for the Slavic countries that would become independent as the Ottoman Empire receded in the Balkans.
Serbia
Serbia, whose flag dates back to 1830, simply flipped Russia’s flag over and substituted a darker blue and red.
This is actually the country’s civil flag. The state flag includes a distinctive coat of arms, a little to the left of center:
Let’s go with this instead.
Slovenia & Slovakia
It’s like they’re twins – same name, same flag, same obscure part of Eastern Europe. How’s anybody supposed to tell ‘em apart? I’m not sure what we can do with these two.
Alternative
I’m surprised none of these countries simply switched the colors around a little:
Same general idea – but just enough difference that you can tell them apart. C’mon, people!
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There’s a lotta countries out there. Given that, I’m not too surprised that there were some girls who wore the exact same dress to the party, if you know what I mean.
Cote d’Ivoire
The Cote d’Ivoire, AKA the Ivory Coast, was a former French colony that went with a variation of the tricolore. The orange is supposed to be represent the savannahs of the north part of the country, the green the forests of the south, and the white peace between the two regions.
Unfortunately, that combination looks a heck of a lot like Ireland’s.
Interestingly, the symbolism is much the same. In this one, though, the green stands for the Catholics in the south and the orange for Protestants in the north.
Now, you could say that simply switching the stripe that appears at the host is enough to tell the difference between these two. I, however, think we can do a little better than that.
For example, what if we were to introduce one of the pan-African colors into the Ivorian flag:
We can say that it symbolizes the wealth of the country, or the sun that shines on all Ivorians, or whatever you like …
Niger
Niger is another west African country and former French Colony that has elected to go with an orange-white-green scheme.
Unfortunately, that also makes it look a lot like India’s:
(By the way, the symbolism in the Indian flag is very similar to that of Ireland’s. In India’s case, though, we’ve got Hindu orange and Muslim green.)
So, let’s go ahead and throw in some yellow on this one too (Niger’s, not India’s):
Done!
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