Three Flags: Morocco, Uruguay and Republic of Formosa
An (occasionally reoccurring) feature on flags
This may seem like a rather unusual mix of flags for this post, but I assure you, dear reader, this is a touch of a method to my apparent madness. First, FIFA announced that the 2030 World Cup would be hosted by three countries: Spain, Portugal, and Morocco which isn’t unusual. The 2026 World Cup is going to be hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico, after all. What is unusual is that to mark the centenary of the tournament Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay will each host one match- including the opening game in Montevideo at the Centenario Stadium hosted the inaugural 1930 World Cup Final.
Logistically craziness aside, I really like that FIFA is doing this. It’s a nice way to mark the 100th Anniversary (and really, had both Rutgers, Princeton and the NCAA been thinking they would have scheduled something in 2019 to mark college football’s 150th Anniversary.) That explains two out of my three choices— and because I think historical flags are worth exploring too, I threw in the Republic of Formosa, because (as you’ll soon see), it has an awesome flag.
I actually really like this flag. Not every Islamic country references the crescent and star in their flags, but a lot do- especially in the neighborhood of Morocco. (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Mauritania— a little further afield, you’ve got Turkey, Pakistan, and Azerbaijan) but none of them uses a pentagram. Adopted on November 17th, 1915, it’s been around in some form or another despite periods of French and Spanish control (its use was forbidden at sea, but it was used on land) before becoming the national flag for good when independence was achieved in 1955.
The green star represents the five pillars of Islam and the red of the flag stands for the blood of the ancestors and unity. Red also has a lot of historical significance for the ruling house of Morocco, the Alawid Dynasty. It’s also a color associated with the sharifs of Mecca and the imams of Yemen and when the first flags of the country were actually just plain red.
(The wiki page for the flag also says the pentagram represents the Seal of Solomon, an Islamic symbol. There’s not much more to it than that, but click the link to check it out for yourselves.)
Okay, full disclosure: I am working on figuring out how to put borders around flags with excessive amounts of white in them. I did learn some very basic HTML to learn how to do it back on Blogger but have yet to figure out how to apply that knowledge to Substack, so if this looks a little funky, I’m sorry.
But, Uruguay (who beat Brazil for the first time in 22 years this week in World Cup qualifiers) has had this flag in this rough form since 1828— though the number of stripes was reduced from nineteen to nine in 1830. It’s also one of three official flags of Uruguay— which is something I didn’t know- along with the flag of Artigas and the flag of the Treinta y Tres.
The horizontal stripes on the flags represent the nine original departments of Uruguay, based on the thirteen original colonies that we see in the United States flag. Unsurprisingly- given they are geographical neighbors, you also find the Sun of May up the upper canton, a symbol also seen on the flag of Argentina. Uruguay’s is slightly different than Argentina’s: theirs has sixteen rays that alternate between straight and wavy, while Argentina has thirty-two rays, evenly split between straight and wavy.
It’s believed to represent Inti, the Incan God of the Sun, but also seen as a symbol of the May Revolution of 1810 which marked the beginning of the independence movement from Spain for all the countries of the Rio De La Plata. (The story goes that as the new government was proclaimed, the sun broke through the clouds and it was seen as a good omen.)
Finally, the Republic of Formosa:
It’s important to note from the outset that this has nothing to do with the modern independence movement in Taiwan. Rather, this was a short-lived polity that existed between the formal cession of Taiwan by the Qing Dynasty to the Empire of Japan (under the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki) and the Japanese arriving with troops to secure the island. All told it lasted 151 days, from May 23rd, 1895 to October 21st, 1895 when Tainan was seized by the Japanese.
(For political science nerds: it’s actually not the first East Asian Republic claimed— the Lanfang Republic in Borneo lasted from 1777 to 1884 and the Republic of Ezo in Japan, which lasted for five months before being annexed by the Empire of Japan.)
I will be honest: this is one of my favorite historical flags, because, it’s badass. It’s a yellow tiger! But when you dig a little deeper into the Republic of Formosa, it becomes slightly… less badass. The calculation by the Qing Dynasty at the time was that an independently proclaimed Republic on the island did not violate the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, but if the Republic successfully resisted the Japanese, it would pave the way for the island to return to Chinese control at some point in the future.
So, on the face of it, it seems like, “All right, the Chinese gave the island away, so they rose up to resist the Japanese and claim their FREEDOM!” That’s not really what the point of all of this was— reading the Wiki page, it seems like more of an attempted backdoor way to get around the terms of the treaty that the Chinese government at the time didn’t like. (Because this was 1895 and they had just lost a war, which is never a good feeling.)
I’ve done a deep dive on the interwebs trying to find out more about the symbolism of the flag and what it might mean and didn’t have much luck. But what I did find was a fascinating article about the replica of the original flag that is currently on display in the National Taiwan Museum- that told me that the original was taken back to Japan and no one knows where it is and what happened to it and the flag that the National Taiwan Museum currently has was a replica painted in 1909. Unfortunately, that too didn’t give me much insight into where the symbolism came from and what it might mean.
Despite all of that, it’s still a badass flag and one of my favorite historical flags.
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That’s all I’ve got for this installment of Three Flags. If you like it, let me know in the comments and if you too, have someone who loves flags in your life, send them this post and tell ‘em to subscribe! I’m always looking for more readers.