Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - All About Flags

Starting point is 00:00:00 Flags are one of the oldest and most successful systems of visual communication ever devised. Long before they became symbols of countries, flags and flag-like objects identified armies, ships, military units, and rulers. However, their modern role as symbols of entire nations is actually a relatively recent development. Learn more about flags and why we even have them on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sometimes the hardest part of car shopping is knowing where to start. I remember the last time I was looking for a vehicle. It didn't take long before I was comparing specs and prices

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Starting point is 00:01:33 Go to car gurus.ca to make sure your big deal is the best deal. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot CA. Car gurus.com. Welcome to the I-Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold

Starting point is 00:02:14 your attention and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Every single country on earth has a flag. Most subnational units such as states and provinces also have flags. In fact, most cities have flags and many schools, companies, and organizations do too. So why exactly did we settle on a piece of cloth with a design to represent something. Originally, there were no flags. The earliest ancestors of flags were not pieces of cloth at all. Ancient armies needed a visible object around which soldiers could rally in which comrades could use to identify units across the chaotic battlefield. Many early civilizations mounted symbols on poles. Egyptians used standards topped with

Starting point is 00:03:22 representations of gods, animals, or royal symbols. Mesopotamian armies carried symbols. objects. Persian armies used standards, including famously elaborate royal standards. The Romans developed an extraordinarily elaborate system of military standards. Perhaps the best known was the Aquila or eagle carried by every legion. Losing a legion's eagle was considered a catastrophe and a profound disgrace. The Romans also used something called a vexalum, which more closely resembled a flag. It consisted of a rectangular piece of cloth hanging vertically from a horizontal crossbar attached to a pole. The modern word vexology comes from this object, but more on vexology in a bit. Roman standards served several purposes simultaneously. They identified units, communicated

Starting point is 00:04:15 orders, gave soldiers a point to rally around, represented military honor, and symbolized the authority of Rome. That combination of practical identification and emotional symbolism has remained central to flags ever since. China appears to have been one of the earliest civilizations to make extensive use of cloth banners resembling modern flags. Chinese sources describe banners associated with armies and rulers as early as the Zhao period beginning in the 11th century BC. The key technological development was lightweight fabric. A rigid symbol on a pole could certainly be seen, but a large piece of silk or other cloth could flutter above troops,

Starting point is 00:04:58 making it much more visible. This basic advantage, the ability to be easily seen on a battlefield, explains much of the flag's success. Flag traditions developed independently across much of Asia. Chinese military manners became increasingly sophisticated, with different colors, shapes, characters, and symbols identifying commanders and units. Similar traditions developed in Korea, Japan, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. Japanese warfare eventually produced an especially elaborate flag culture.

Starting point is 00:05:30 Samurai armies used banner such as the Hatajerushi and later long vertical Norobi. During the medieval and early modern periods, soldiers sometimes carried small identifying flags called Sashimonos on their back. Islamic armies also placed enormous symbolic importance on banners. The Prophet Muhammad and the early Muslim community were traditionally associated with black and white standards. Later Islamic dynasties became strongly associated with particular colors. The avocids, for example, famously adopted black. As Islamic states spread from Spain to Central Asia, banners became symbols not only of military units, but of dynasties, religious authority, and political legitimacy.

Starting point is 00:06:13 Colors consequently acquired political associations that survived into many modern flags. The European flag tradition changed dramatically during the Middle Ages. As feudal society developed, rulers and noble families needed recognizable visual symbols. Beginning in the 12th century, European heraldry developed into a systematic language of coats of arms. A knight may display the same basic design on his shield, his armor, his horse equipment, and, on a banner. This produced the Heraldric banner, essentially a coat of arms transformed into a rectangular flag. A medieval flag, therefore, usually represented a person, especially a nobleman or a monarch, rather than a country in a modern sense. A French soldier might be fighting

Starting point is 00:07:02 beneath the banner of his lord, who fought beneath another nobleman's banner who ultimately served the king. For example, there was not necessarily a single French national flag recognizable to everyone in France until the French Revolution. The Crusades helped popularize another extraordinarily important detail found on many modern national flags, the cross. Christian armies used crosses as both religious symbols and practical identifiers. Different forms and colors eventually became associated with particular territories and rulers. There was a Maltese cross, a Jerusalem cross, a Greek cross, and many other variants. The most important surviving family of these designs is the Nordic cross.

Starting point is 00:07:47 It eventually inspired the flags of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland. Denmark's Dana Bro, a white cross on a red field, emerged during the Middle Ages. Danish tradition dates it back to the Battle of Lindanise in Estonia in 1219, where legend claims it descended from heaven. The design itself is firmly documented as early as the 14th century, and it is considered the world's oldest continually used national flag. A major conceptual change occurred when flags gradually stopped representing individual rulers and began representing territories and governments.

Starting point is 00:08:24 However, this process was slow and it didn't happen overnight. Cities were important pioneers. Medieval trading cities often needed easily recognizable symbols independent of whichever ruler happened to govern them at that time. Merchant communities, guilds, city governments, and republics therefore developed their own banners. The Italian maritime republics were especially important. By the 13th century, cities such as Genoa and Venice were using distinctive maritime flags.

Starting point is 00:08:55 Genoese ships famously flew the Red Cross of St. George on White, while Venice developed its Lion of St. Mark banner. These flags represented political communities rather than individual rulers. And it wasn't a coincidence that the first places to use flags were to use flags, and it wasn't a coincidence that the first place is to use flags to represent a community were seafaring states, because the development of modern flags really can't be understood without understanding maritime history. Ships created a problem that land armies didn't face to the same degree. From several miles away, sailors needed to determine who was that ship? Was it a friend, an enemy, a merchant, or a pirate? Was it the Dutch, the English,

Starting point is 00:09:38 the Spanish, or the Venetians? A coat of arms painted on the side of a ship would be too small to sea. A large flag was ideal for this purpose. During the late Middle Ages and during the age of exploration, European states increasingly required ships to display recognizable flags, indicating nationality or allegiance. Flags, therefore, became standardized much earlier at sea than they did on land. In many cases, what eventually became a country's national flag began as a

Starting point is 00:10:09 a naval or merchant flag. One of the most influential developments in flag history occurred during the Dutch struggle against Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries. Dutch forces used a horizontal orange-white blue flag associated with William of Orange. But over time, orange was replaced by red, creating the familiar red, white, and blue of the flag of the Netherlands. The Dutch flag became enormously influential, partially because the Dutch Republic became one of the world's leading maritime and commercial powers. A simple three-striped design was extremely

Starting point is 00:10:45 useful at sea. It was recognizable from a distance, relatively easy to manufacture, and distinguishable even when partly obscured. The red, white, and blue design became firmly established as the Dutch national flag. But more importantly, it helped establish the tricolor as a common template in flag design. Flying flags from fixed flag poles on land, became common much later than the use of flags themselves. The big transition occurred mainly from the late 18th through 19th century, with widespread civilian flagpole use becoming especially common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Before that, most land flags were not flown continuously from tall poles in the modern sense.

Starting point is 00:11:31 Medieval and early modern flags were usually carried on staffs by soldiers, heralds, or officials, or temporarily mounted on castle's gates and buildings. Tall poles were much more characteristic of ships, which is one reason so much flag terminology, including Mast, Ensign, Jack, and Halliard has maritime origins. The first important land use of large fixed flag poles was in the military. Fortresses and garrisons increasingly erected tall poles so that their colors could identify who was in control of the fort.

Starting point is 00:12:04 The 19th century was the great age of national flag creation. As nationalism spread across Europe and Latin America, political movements increasingly adopted flags even before they had countries. A flag could therefore become an argument that said, We are a people and we should have a state. Italian nationalists rallied around the green, white, red, tricolor before Italian unification. German nationalists adopted black, red, and gold, and Pan-Slavic movements frequently used.

Starting point is 00:12:34 used red, white, and blue. The scholarly study of flags is known as vexelology. As a formal field, it's surprisingly young. People had studied flags for centuries, especially heralds, naval officers, and military historians, but vexelology didn't emerge as a distinct discipline until the 20th century. The word itself was coined in 1957 by the American scholar Whitney Smith, who combined the Latin vexolum with the Greek-derived suffix, ology, meaning study of. Smith became the central figure in establishing vexilology as a field. He founded the Flag Research Center in 1962 and helped create organizations and publications

Starting point is 00:13:16 devoted specifically to the systematic study of flags. In 1965, he helped organize the first international congress of vexelology. And in 1967, the International Federation of Vexological Associations, or FIAV, was established. From that point onward, Vexilology developed an international scholarly community with its own terminology, conventions, and journals. One of the most basic concepts in Vexilology is that a flag is not merely decorative cloth. It is a symbol designed to communicate identity at a distance. That practical requirement explains much of flag design. Flags have a terminology, and you're probably familiar with the parts of a flag, if not the actual words used to

Starting point is 00:14:03 describe them. A flag has a particular orientation. The hoist is the side attached to the pole. The fly is the side extending away from the pole, and the outermost edge of the flag is the fly end. The canton is normally the upper corner nearest the hoist. The best known example is the blue rectangle containing the stars on the United States flag. The Union Jack occupies the canton of the Australian and New Zealand flags. Cantones are historically important because they often indicate political relationships. British colonial flags, for example, frequently placed the union flag in the canton. A charge is a symbol placed on a flag. Common charges include stars, crescents, suns, crosses, animals, plants, weapons, shield, and coats of arms. The term comes from heraldry. A Canadian

Starting point is 00:14:57 maple leaf is an example of a charge. So is the sea. on Lebanon's flag and the eagle on Mexico's flag. Flags aren't just a means of identification. They've also turned into a competition. For decades, countries have been trying to outdo each other in the race to fly the biggest flag. The tallest flag pole in the world currently is in Egypt's new administrative capital near Cairo. The Guinness Records records it at 202 meters or about 662 feet, and it was completed in December 2021. It was built to fly the Egyptian national flag. The largest flag ever flown on a pole

Starting point is 00:15:37 measures 3,235 square meters or a little under 35,000 square feet. The seaside Boulevard administration raised it in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 18, 2025. While Azerbaijan's flag is the largest to ever fly from a flagpole, it is not the largest in the world, and it's not even close. In 2013, the nation of Qatar created a massive national flag measuring about 102 square meters, large enough to cover roughly 14 soccer fields as part of their National Day celebrations. Guinness World Records recognized it at the time as the largest flag ever made, although it was laid out on the ground rather than flown from a flagpole. It's hard to think of a world without flags.

Starting point is 00:16:26 Plagues are the first thing many people think of when they think of countries. Yet all the flags of nations today stem from ancient battlefields when everyone just wanted to know who was on which side. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast, and links to those are available in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:17:05 As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - All About Flags

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