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Two Flags Based on the French Tricolour

The French tricolour is one of the most influential flags in history, inspiring most prominently perhaps the Italian and Irish flags, but also dozens other, including the nationalist triband flags (like those of Germany, Russia, etc.). Indeed, the national flags of nearly sixty UN member states are based on these vertical or horizontal stripe combinations.

While long identified with revolution, republicanism, and nationalism, the French flag originally represented a combination of the blue and red of Paris — the colours of Saint Martin and Saint Denis — with the white of the French monarchy. Two (non-national) flags based directly on the French tricolour are those of the Acadians in North America and of Franschhoek in South Africa.

The Acadian flag was designed in 1884 by Fr. Marcel-François Richard, taking the French tricolour and adding a star to represent the Blessed Virgin of the Assumption, who is the patroness of the Acadian people, and under her invocation as Stella Maris as many of the Acadians are fisherman and sailors. The yellow for the star, meanwhile, was chosen to invoke loyalty to the Papacy.

As the French Republic never ruled Acadie or any part of New France (St Pierre & Miquelon excepted), there is a sense that this flag reconnects the Acadians of the New World with their contemporary cousins in the motherland, as well as connect them outside of time with their Heavenly patroness. Interestingly, the Acadians (“Cajuns”) of Louisiana have a different flag, though also including a Marian star.

The small Western-Cape town of Franschhoek meanwhile also celebrates its French origins — the town’s name is Afrikaans for ‘French Corner’. The valley was settled in the 1680s and I believe this civic flag was registered with the South African Bureau of Heraldry for the town’s three-hundredth anniversary in 1988. It is comprised of a French tricolour with a grey elephant in the central white band.

The valley was first known as Olifantshoek (‘Elephant’s Corner’) because of the elephants that roamed in it. These giants were overshadowed by the Huguenot settlers who founded the town and its vineyards. (My favourite is Achim von Arnim’s Haute Cabrière, with its delicious Pierre Jourdan bubbly). An elephant was last seen in the valley in 1850, but the descendants of the Huguenots still live in Franschhoek, joined by some more recent French additions attracted by the town’s high culinary culture.

Published at 4:24 pm on Friday 27 December 2013. Categories: Design Errant Thoughts Flags France Tags: , , .
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