Flag with three bands (bends or pales), not necessarily in three colours
A triband is a vexillological style which consists of three stripes arranged to form a flag. These stripes may be two or three colours, and may be charged with an emblem in the middle stripe.[1] All tricolour flags are tribands, but not all tribands are tricolour flags, which requires three unique colours.
Design
Outside of the name, which requires three bands of colour, there are no other requirements for what a triband must look like, so there are many flags that look very different from each other but are all considered tribands.
Some triband flags (e.g. those of Croatia and Ghana) have their stripes positioned horizontally, while others (e.g. that of Italy) position the stripes vertically. Often the stripes on a triband are of equal length and width, though this is not always the case, as can be seen in the flags of Colombia and Canada. Symbols on tribands may be seals, such as on the Belizean flag, or any manner of emblems of significance to the area the flag represents, such as in the flags of Argentina, India and Lebanon.
A triband is also a tricolour if the three stripes on the flag are all different colours, rather than two being the same colour. Examples of tricolour flags include those of the Netherlands and France.
Tricolour
A tricolour (BE) or tricolor (AE) is a type of triband design which originated in the 16th century as a symbol of republicanism, liberty, or revolution. The oldest tricolour flag originates from the Netherlands, whose successor later inspired the French and Russian flags.[2][3] The flags of France, Italy, Romania, Mexico, Ireland and Paraguay[4] were all adopted with the formation of an independent republic in the period of the French Revolution to the Revolutions of 1848, with the exception of the Irish tricolour, which dates from 1848 but was not popularised until the Easter Rising in 1916 and adopted in 1919.[5]
History
The first association of the tricolour with republicanism is the orange-white-blue design of the Prince's Flag (Prinsenvlag, predecessor of the flags of the Netherlands), used from 1579 by William I of Orange-Nassau in the Eighty Years' War, establishing the independence of the Dutch Republic from the Spanish Empire. Its red-white-blue successor is the oldest tricolour flag still in use. The flag of the Netherlands inspired both the French and Russian flags, which in turn further inspired many tricolour flags in other countries.[2][3]
Though not the first tricolour flag, one of the most famous, known as Le Tricolore, is the blue, white and red (whence also called Le Bleu-Blanc-Rouge) flag of France adopted in 1790 during the French Revolution. Based on a 1789 design of the Cockade of France, it was easy to construct and also stood in a visual opposition to complicated royal banners of the Ancien Regime.
The green-white-red tricolour remained a symbol of republicanism throughout the 19th century and was adopted as national flag by a number of states following the Revolutions of 1848. It was also adopted by the Kingdom of Sardinia (inherited by the Kingdom of Italy 1861).
The flag of Germany (black-red-gold) originates from the uniform colours of the Lützow Free Corps during the Napoleonic Wars, which contained volunteers from many German states and became famous through propaganda. Prominent veterans and later students became the core of the republican movement of early 1800s which adopted the colours. At the time the flag was known as Dreifarb, a German calque of Tricolore. It was a symbol of opposition against the German Kleinstaaterei and the desire for German Unification. It was at first illegal in the German Confederation, but was adopted as the national flag at the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848/9. The flag of Belgium was introduced in a similar context, in 1831, its colours taken from the flag used in the Brabant Revolution of 1789. The first national flag of the New World inspired by this symbolism was the flag of Mexico, adopted when the First Mexican Empire gained independence from Spain in 1821.
During the brief Second Spanish Republic, a red-yellow-purple tricolour was adopted as its official flag. Today, it is still used by Spanish republicans.
The Indian independence movement in 1931 also adopted a tricolour (loan-translated as Hindi, तिरंगा Tiraṅgā) in the traditional symbolism of "national unification" and republican "self-rule" (Purna Swaraj), adopted as the flag of the India in 1947.[6]
In 1999, a red, green, and blue tricolour was proposed as the Flag of Mars. The design symbolises liberty, and also the terraforming of Mars by humanity from a red planet to a green one, and eventually an Earth-like blue one.
Fin flash on military aircraft, sometimes in a "tricolour" form
References
^Smith, Whitney (2003). Flag Lore of All Nations. Brookfield, Connecticut: The Millbrook Press. ISBN 0-7613-1753-8.
^ a bHylland Eriksen, Thomas; Jenkins, Richard (2007). Flag, nation and symbolism in Europe and America. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-93496-8. OCLC 182759362.
^ a b"Flags That Look Alike". Britannica. Retrieved 2023-04-23.
^"Las Banderas del Paraguay y su Historia: el Ministerio del Interior cuenta con una Galería". mdi.gov.py. May 20, 2017. Archived from the original on Oct 7, 2016.
^"tricolor - definition of tricolor". Oxford Dictionaries | English. Archived from the original on 1 November 2016. Retrieved 2016-10-31.
^Roy, Srirupa (August 2006). "A Symbol of Freedom: The Indian Flag and the Transformations of Nationalism, 1906–". Journal of Asian Studies. 65 (3): 508. ISSN 0021-9118. OCLC 37893507.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gallery of triband flags.