Origin of national flags

A flag is “a piece of cloth with a special coloured design on it that may be the symbol of a particular country or an organisation. A flag can be attached to a pole or held in the hand”, the dictionary states.

The “pole” mentioned in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary’s definition of a “flag” above is also known as a staff.
A staff that holds a flag is called “flagstaff”.
A Flagstaff House is a building that accommodates the flag and the office of an officer in the police service or the armed forces in charge of the flag.
There are many kinds of flags. There are national flags, state or county flags, city flags and flags that belong to organisations and chieftain.
The concern of this article is national flags and their design, origin and meaning of symbols attached to them.
For lack of sufficient space, this article will deal with only national flags of nations that took part in the Second World War – United States of America (USA or US), United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK), France, Russia, Germany, Italy and Japan.
I will also make brief reference to flags of independent African states.
The national flag of the USA consists 13 horizontal stripes in blue and white colours and 53 stars on a canton at the top left-hand corner.
The “stripes and stars banner”, as the American flag is known, has been that country’s national flag since 1777. It is said to be the third oldest national flag in world history.
Minor changes have been made to the flag since then to indicate admission of a new state to the union.
Number of stars increased as new states joined the union. Stars on the canton have increased to 53; the number of stripes remains the same.
The Union Jack, the flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, was created and used for the first time in 1801 when Ireland joined the union of Great Britain.
The flag “consists of the red cross of St George, patron saint of England, edged in white superimposed on the cross of St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, which are superimposed on the saltire of St Andrew, patron saint of Scotland”.
Russia’s national flag is in equal bands of white, blue and red in horizontal positions.
It was used for the first time as a naval flag for the Russian merchant ships and adopted as an official flag for the Czar of Russia in 1696.
The white, blue and red flag was the national flag of the Russian Federation until the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The USSR flag was an entirely red flag with a sickle and a hammer at the top left-hand corner.
After the democratic revolution in 1991, the white, blue and red flag was restored as Russia’s national flag.
The origin of the Russian flag has been traced to many accounts. One predominant story about its beginning is that on a visit to Amsterdam in Holland, the Czar of Russia, Peter the Great, ordered for a ship to be built for his country’s naval force.
The frigate arrived in Russia flying a Dutch flag in 1694. Peter the Great, there and then, requested that Russia’s flag should be designed like the Dutch flag with minor modifications.
The Peter the Great flag of white, blue and red was formally adopted as Russia’s national flag on May 7, 1883.
Black, red and gold are the colours of Germany’s national flag.
The three equal horizontal bands of black, red and gold was adopted as national flag of modern Germany in 1919 in the Weimar Republic.
When Germany was divided into West Germany and East Germany after World War II, the black, red and gold flag was used by both German countries; but in 1959, East Germany made a modification by adding its coat of arms to the flag.
The original German national flag was adopted as the flag of united Germany in 1990.
The French flag of blue, white and red was adopted in 1794. It was used by the Napoleon Bonaparte army in 1812 and reintroduced in 1830.
The colour, blue, is regarded as a colour for St Martin and red, for St Denis, both patron saints of France. The blue and red colours are also associated with the Virgin Mary, the patroness of France.
To the French people, blue stands for freedom; white for equality and red for fraternity or brotherhood.
The flag of Italy is in tricolour of red, white and green arranged in horizontal stripes.
It was said to be inspired by the French flag that was taken to Italy by Napoleon in 1797.
The green colour represents the plains of Italy; the white, the snow-capped Alps and red, the blood of those lost in the wars of independence.
In religious terms, green stands for hope, white, for faith and red, for charity.
The flag of Japan is in white rectangular shape with the sun at the centre.
It was accepted as the national flag of Japan in 1870 and formally adopted in 1999 as the official flag of Japan.
The original Japanese flag featuring the sun was in use in 1701 when Emperor Mommu displayed a flag with the sun in his palace.
Japan is regarded as the “land of the rising sun” because the sun rises first on Earth on the archipelago which is at the farthermost east of the Asian continent.
The flags of various independent African countries are of recent origin. Flags of colonial countries of Europe were adopted by colonised African nations until independence in the 1960s or before.
The Union Jack was the flag of countries of colonial British Africa until independence.
The Ghana Flag of red, gold and green with a black star at the centre replaced the Union Jack in 1957.
In 1965, the Convention People’s Party government of Dr Kwame Nkrumah replaced the independence flag with his party’s flag of red, white and green colours with a black star at the centre.
The original flag was restored after the 1966 military takeover.
Last week, Ghanaians paid a fitting tribute to Mrs Theodosia Okoh, credited with designing of the Ghana Flag. She was given a grand state burial.
Origins of the Ghana Flag appear not to have been well presented. Did Mrs Theodosia Okoh design the flag alone?
Was she assisted by the organisers of the competition that chose her specimen as the winner? Did they take something out and added something to her original work?
Could her devout Christian mind have chosen a black star and fixed it at the centre of her creation?
The black star, known as the Black Star of Africa, was a political and Pan-Africanist idea traced to Jamaican Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Shipping Line.
Dr Kofi Abrefa Busia, a lay priest of the Methodist Church of Ghana and a former Prime Minister of Ghana, had complained about the black star on the Ghana Flag which he said was a bad or evil omen and had wanted the constituent assembly to remove it and replace it with a white star.
On the other hand, under copyright law, the Ghana Flag, like all other national flags, is the sole property of the state.
The state commissioned its creation and owns it in its present form. However, the intellectual property right or brain-child of its designer belongs to her.

(therson.cofie@yahoo.com)