Caspian Blue - History of Blue - The Blue Uniform

The Blue Uniform

In the 17th century, Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, was one of the first rulers to gave his army blue uniforms. The reasons were economic; the German states were trying to protect their pastel dye industry against competition from imported indigo dye. When Brandenburg became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, the uniform colour was adopted by the Prussian army. Most German soldiers wore dark blue uniforms until the First World War, with the exception of the Bavarians, who wore light blue.

Thanks in part to the availability of indigo dye, the 18th century saw the widespread use of blue military uniforms. Prior to 1748, British naval officers simply wore upper-class civilian clothing and wigs. In 1748, the British uniform for naval officers was officially established as an embroidered coat of the colour then called marine blue, now known as navy blue. When the Continental Navy of the United States was created in 1775, it largely copied the British uniform and colour.

In the late 18th century, the blue uniform became a symbol of liberty and revolution. In October 1774, even before the United States declared its independence, George Mason and one hundred Virginia neighbours of George Washington organised a voluntary militia unit (the Fairfax County Independent Company of Volunteers) and elected Washington the honorary commander. For their uniforms they chose blue and buff, the colours of the Whig Party, the opposition party in England, whose policies were supported by George Washington and many other patriots in the American colonies.

When the Continental Army was established in 1775 at the outbreak of the American Revolution, the first Continental Congress declared that the official uniform colour would be brown, but this was not popular with many militias, whose officers were already wearing blue. In 1778 the Congress asked George Washington to design a new uniform, and in 1779 Washington made the official colour of all uniforms blue and buff. Blue continued to be the colour of the field uniform of the U.S. Army until 1902, and is still the colour of the dress uniform.

In France, the Gardes Françaises, the elite regiment which protected Louis XVI, wore dark blue uniforms with red trim. In 1789, the soldiers gradually changed their allegiance from the King to the people, and they played a leading role in the storming of the Bastille. After the fall of Bastille, a new armed force, the Garde Nationale, was formed under the command of the Marquis de Lafayette, who had served with George Washington in America. Lafayette gave the Garde Nationale dark blue uniforms similar to those of the Continental Army. Blue became the colour of the Revolutionary armies, opposed to the white uniforms of the Royalists and the Austrians.

Napoleon Bonaparte abandoned many of the doctrines of the French Revolution but he kept blue as the uniform colour for his army, although he had great difficulty obtaining the blue dye, since the British controlled the seas and blocked the importation of indigo to France. Napoleon was forced to dye uniforms with woad, which had an inferior blue colour. The French army wore a dark blue uniform coat with red trousers until 1915, when it was found to be a too visible target on the battlefields of World War I. It was replaced with uniforms of a light blue-grey colour called horizon blue.

Blue was the colour of liberty and revolution in the 18th century, but in the 19th it increasingly became the colour of government authority, the uniform colour of policemen and other public servants. It was considered serious and authoritative, without being menacing. In 1829, when Robert Peel created the first London Metropolitan Police, he made the colour of the uniform jacket a dark, almost black blue, to make the policemen look different from soldiers, who until then had patrolled the streets. The traditional blue jacket with silver buttons of the London "bobbie" was not abandoned until the mid-1990s, when it was replaced by a light blue shirt and a jumper or sweater of the colour officially known as NATO blue.

The New York City Police Department, modeled after the London Metropolitan Police, was created in 1844, and in 1853, they were officially given a navy blue uniform, the colour they wear today.

• Elector Frederic William of Brandenburg gave his soldiers blue uniforms (engraving from 1698). When Brandenburg became the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701, blue became the uniform colour of the Prussian Army.

• Uniform of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy (1777). Marine blue became the official colour of the Royal Navy uniform coat in 1748.

• George Washington chose blue and buff as the colours of the Continental Army uniform. They were the colours of the English Whig Party, which Washington admired.

• The Marquis de Lafayette in the uniform of the Garde Nationale during the French Revolution (1790).

• The cadets of the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, the French military academy, still wear the blue and red uniform of the French army before 1915.

• In 1853, New York policemen and firemen were officially outfitted in navy blue uniforms.

• Metropolitan police officers in Soho, London (2007).

• New York City police officers on Times Square (2010).

• Chicago policeman in blue on a Segway PT(2005)