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That doesn't sound right; synthetic dyes didn't exist until the mid-19th century and there's lots of other flag colors from way before that. Just a few of the m

• 082349872349872 3y ago
  Interesting; I'll have to check these out. Up until now the exception I had been aware of was the Dutch flag, which in theory had (16th century) been blue, white, orange, but in practice is flown with blue, white, red. ==== I think part of the issue here is distinguishing flags (flown by many people almost all the time) from banners/standards (flown by a small group that can afford to replace them often, only on certain occasions). So the HRE had a black/gold banner, but when they needed flags, they reached for red/white. (and Muhammad is said to have had a rāya in black but a ʿalam in white; this theory would predict that Muhammad's personal unit would fly the black banner, but his troops in general would have flown white flags) Then again, maybe black should be added to the basis set (what would this have been? indigo+madder? or after 1500, indigo+cochineal?) https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ch-war.html#desc https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ch-war.html#desc has a chronological list with many pre-1800 blacks, but only two anachronistic choices. (Uri:1291:gold/black, Schaffhausen:1501:green/black, although I should confirm the latter; I'd have expected* gold/black here as well and bet the green is post-Napoleonic) [EDIT: Indeed, now that I read more closely, the colours on the list are indeed post-Napoleonic, and the dates given are only used for sort order. It might be worth looking through some old artwork to see what the pre-1800 colour choices were. EDIT 2: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlachtkapelle_Sempach#/media/Datei:Kapelle_Sempach_Gemälde.jpg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlachtkapelle_Sempach#/media... shows battle flags exactly equivalent to heraldic designs, but was painted ~250 years after the event depicted, so I'm not sure how reliable it may be.] That having taken care of Prussia, we're left with León and the Mughals. León the city and León the province both use noticeably redder colours than the purpure of the heraldry of León the kingdom, and the Mughal moss green seems to have been more a banner than a flag, flown infrequently enough to use non-lightfast colours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Mughal_Empire#:~:text=they%20were%20unfurled,and%20in%20battle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Mughal_Empire#:~:... Maybe I should say "usually" instead of "fairly reliably", but the exceptions have thus far been reasonably exceptional. * fun fact: the penis of Bern's bear is hilighted in red, but that of Schaffhausen's ram retains the background gold.
  • 082349872349872 3y ago
    Hmmm: officially it seems banners are hung from the top while flags are pole-mounted from the side. In attempting to look up rāya and ʿalam I did run across various statements about when they should be furled and unfurled; I guess I need better vocabulary for all this... Anyone have enough vexillology to know what the appropriate search terms would be for a "widely replicated, continuously displayed, cloth-based political symbol"?
  • perihelions 3y ago
    I'm wondering about the assumption that flags were "flown by many people almost all the time". I believe the madder root can dye fabrics orange too [0,1,2]—I don't know anything about the chemical process, or whether this is what old orange flags (like the Dutch) actually used. But it does look like a more muted color; the deeper red/crimson is what you get from using more (?) of this dyestuff, and is more saturated and vibrant. Maybe your thesis is basically right: though many fabric colors were available, people gravitated towards the ones that produced the most vibrant, striking hues—i.e. favoring red over orange. At least for ostentatious purposes like state flags. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia#/media/File:Naturally_dyed_skeins.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubia#/media/File:Naturally_dy... ("Skeins of yarn colored with dye from madder root, Rubia tinctorum") [1] https://localcolordyes.com/2013/11/29/madder-the-inexhaustible-root-part-one-orange/ https://localcolordyes.com/2013/11/29/madder-the-inexhaustib... ("Madder the Inexhaustible Root–Part One: Orange") [2] https://localcolordyes.com/2014/01/04/madder-the-inexhaustible-subject-matter/ https://localcolordyes.com/2014/01/04/madder-the-inexhaustib... ("Madder the Inexhaustible Subject Matter")
    • 082349872349872 3y ago
      I agree that many colours were available, but I don't think it was gravitating to vibrant, striking, hues so much as gravitating to lightfast hues. I've spent a lot of the past decade at or over 1'500m in a relatively sunny area, and even with modern colours, anything that's outside for several years tends to wind up looking like someone selected a single channel in Photoshop: faded to either red/white or blue/white.