Red - The Red Flag and Revolution

The Red Flag and Revolution

In the Middle Ages, ships in combat hoisted a long red streamer, called the Baucans, to signify a fight to the death. In the 17th century, a red flag signalled defiance. A besieged castle or city would raise a red flag to tell the attackers that they would not surrender.

The red flag appeared as a political symbol during the French Revolution, after the fall of Bastille. A law adopted by the new government on October 20, 1789 authorized the Garde Nationale to raise the red flag in the event of a riot, to signal that the Garde would imminently intervene. During a demonstration on the Champs de Mars on July 17, 1791, the Garde Nationale fired on the crowd, killed up to fifty people. The government was denounced by the more radical revolutionaries. In the words of his famous hymn, the Marseillaise, Rouget de Lisle wrote: “Against us they have raised the bloody flag of tyranny!” (Contre nous de la tyrannie, l’entendard sanglant est leve.). Beginning in 1790, the most radical revolutionaries adopted the red flag themselves, to symbolize the blood of those killed in the demonstrations, and to call for the repression of those they considered counter-revolutionary,.

During the French Revolution, many in the Paris crowds also wore a red phrygian cap,a symbol of liberty, modeled after the caps worn in ancient Rome by freed slaves; but the colors of the Revolution finally became blue, white and red. The red in the French flag was taken from the emblem of the city of Paris, where it represented the city's patron saint, Saint Denis.

Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto in February 1848, with little attention. However, a few days later the French Revolution of 1848 broke out, which replaced the monarchy of Louis Philippe with the Second French Republic. In June 1848, Paris workers, disenchanted with the new government, built barricades and raised red flags. The new government called in the French Army to put down the uprising, the first of many such confrontations between the army and the new worker's movements in Europe.

Red was also the color of the movement to unify Italy, led by Giuseppe Garibaldi. His followers were known as the camicie rosse, or (redshirts) during the fight for Italian Risorgimento in 1860.

In 1870, following the stunning defeat of the French Army by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War, French workers and socialist revolutionaries seized Paris and created the Paris Commune. The Commune lasted for two months before it was crushed by the French Army, with much bloodshed. The original red banners of the Commune became icons of the socialist revolution; in 1921 members of the French Communist Party came to Moscow and presented the new Soviet government with one of the original Commune banners; it was placed (and is still in place) in the tomb of Vladimir Lenin, next to his open coffin.

With the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the red flag, with a hammer to symbolize the workers and sickle to symbolize peasants, became the official flag of Russia, and, in 1923, of the Soviet Union. It remained so until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Red was also taken up as the flag of the Nazi Party in Germany. Red, white and black were the colors of the flag of the German Empire from 1870 to 1918. In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained that they were "revered colors expressive of our homage to the glorious past." The red was also chosen to attract attention - Hitler wrote: "the new flag... should prove effective as a large poster" because "in hundreds of thousands of cases a really striking emblem may be the first cause of awakening interest in a movement." The red also symbolized the social program of the Nazis, aimed at German workers. Several designs by a number of different authors were considered, but the one adopted in the end was Hitler's personal design.

After the Communist Party of China took power in 1949, the flag of China became a red flag with a large star symbolizing the Communist Party, and smaller stars symbolizing workers, peasants, the urban middle class and rural middle class. The flag of the Communist Party of China became a red banner with a hammer and sickle, similar to that on the Soviet flag. In the 1950s and 1960s, other Communist regimes such as Vietnam and Laos also adopted red flags. Some Communist countries, such as Cuba, chose to keep their old flags; and other countries used red flags which had nothing to do with Communism or socialism; the red flag of Nepal, for instance, represents the national flower.

See also: Red flag

• A French soldier takes down a red flag from the barricades during the Paris uprising of 1848.

• Giuseppe Garibaldi and his "redshirts" led the fight to unify Italy in the 1860s.

• A poster from the Paris Commune (1871)

• A demonstration in Moscow during the unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905, painted by Ilya Repin.

• Red was the color of the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Bolshevik, painting by Boris Kustodiev (1920).

• A poster of Mao Zedong with the red flag of China from the 1950s

• The flag of the Soviet Union (1923-1992). The hammer symbolized workers, the sickle represented peasants, and the red star symbolized the Communist Party.

• The Flag of the People's Republic of China. Red symbolizes revolution, the large star is the Communist Party, and the smaller stars represent the working class, the peasants, and the urban middle class, the rural middle class, as described by Mao Zedong.