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The “Liberty Flag” dates from before the Revolutionary War. Owned by the Schenectady County Historical Society in Schenectady, New York, the flag was conserved and mounted by Spicer Art Conservation, LLC. It is unique among known Revolutionary War-era flags, as extensive documentation for it exists, including when and where it was first flown along with information about the people associated with its use. Further, this flag was not connected with a military unit or anti-Crown protests; rather, it represented a civic statement. In 1771, Schenectady politicians were focused upon how to allocate and manage common lands rather than on the constitutional issues that were at the forefront for other communities in New York and New England. This focus on common lands arose from local disputes between the more recently-arrived English and earlier settlers of Dutch ancestry. This is also a story of the enduring hold of the Dutch culture through decades of English rule—in particular, how the Dutch concept and understanding of “liberty” was distinct from ideas of individual liberty then prevalent in the “English” colonies. In 1771, thus, the local “liberty” protest by English settlers was more about the use of common lands rather than taxation. Furthermore, consideration of the dyestuffs available for the silk fabric, and its current condition, indicate that the flag, now brown, was originally green (not blue, as widely believed).
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This paper considers the impact of flag redesign efforts in Iraq following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s government in 2003. During this period of political and social upheaval, occupying Western powers attempted many modifications to Iraqi governance under the aegis of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Primarily aimed at removing the vestiges of Saddam Hussein’s government, the project of de-Ba’thification attempted to change Iraq into a modern democracy replete with a national flag that symbolized this transformation. A forward-looking design created by the eminent architect Rifat Chadirji was soundly rejected, and Iraq instead approved a modest redesign of the Iraqi flag synonymous with Saddam Hussein and the Ba’th Party.
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In the early 20th century, the Society of the War of 1812 in Maryland gave to the state of Maryland a 13-star, 13-stripe national flag reputed to have been carried in 1781 at the Battle of Cowpens, in the American War for Independence. Other stories circulated about this same flag having later been carried in 1814 at the defense of Baltimore, Maryland, during the War of 1812. Both claims have been called into question by textile experts and historians, who dated the flag only to the mid-19th century. This article provides a meticulous study of previously unexplored documentary evidence, a close tracing of the flag’s provenance, and a reexamination of the flag’s materials and design, in order to reconsider previous conclusions about this “Cowpens Flag”. Presenting a methodological, historiographical, and material culture review of the artifact and of previous studies of the flag, it concludes that the flag in fact dates to the War of 1812. The stories of the flag being at the defense of Baltimore are true: specifically, Ensign Joshua Bachelor of the 27th Regiment of the Maryland Militia carried the flag at the Battle of North Point, Maryland. The “Cowpens Flag” misnomer should thus be replaced with “the Batchelor-North Point Flag”.
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Flag designers often need to decide how to convey the idea of facing or moving “forward”. An effective solution depends on the representational traditions and the psychology of flag perception. These are surprisingly complex matters, however, as people may bring multiple ways of projecting the idea of “forward” onto a flag, ways which can reinforce or contradict one another. This paper lays out five different ways people may impose a sense of horizontal directionality to a flag.
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- Journal Article (4)
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- flag analysis
- American Revolution (1)
- American Revolutionary War (1)
- American War for Independence (1)
- analyzing flags (1)
- Arab flags (1)
- Ba’th Party (1)
- Ba’thi stars (1)
- Batchelor-North Point Flag (1)
- Battle of Cowpens (1)
- Battle of North Point (1)
- blowing flags (1)
- color analysis (1)
- Cowpens flag (1)
- de-Ba’thification (1)
- Directional Paradigms (1)
- directionality (1)
- dyes (1)
- Element-based directionality (1)
- element shapes (1)
- flag design (1)
- flag perception (1)
- flag redesign efforts (1)
- fluttering flags (1)
- flying flags (1)
- forward motion on flags (1)
- forward movement on flags (1)
- Glen-Sanders Family (1)
- heraldic conventions (1)
- Heraldry-based directionality (1)
- historical analysis (1)
- historical flags (1)
- historiographical reviews (1)
- Hoist-based directionality (1)
- hoist-based directionality (1)
- Iraq (1)
- Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority (1)
- Iraq War (1)
- Iraqi flag proposals (1)
- Iraqi vexillography (1)
- Islamic takbir (1)
- Joshua Batchelor (1)
- “Liberty Flag” (1)
- Liberty Poles (1)
- movement of flags in the wind (1)
- New Brunswick flag (1)
- Nicholas Veeder (1761–1862) (1)
- proposed flags (1)
- reading conventions (1)
- Revolutionary flags (1)
- Rifat Chadirji’s Unity Flag (1)
- Saddam Hussein (1)
- Schenectady County Historical Society (1)
- Schenectady Stockade (1)
- semiotics of Iraqi vexillography (1)
- Sir William Johnson (1715–1774) (1)
- Text-based directionality (1)
- textile analysis (1)
- William Batchelor (1)
- Wind-based directionality (1)
- wind direction (1)