Hey Geograpeeps, welcome to Flag Friday. Today's episode is gonna be a heavy one, because
we're gonna discuss Ethiopia
which has a lot of symbolism, and a lot of backstory behind it.
First of all, small minor mistake I made in the episode.
This is actually not the President of Ethiopia, Mulato Teshome.
It's actually the former Prime Minister Hailemarian Desalegn.
Sorry, I Googled the image and then it just popped up for some reason.
I don't know, I assumed it was right but it wasn't and I'm not that great on Etheopian politics, I'm sorry,
it was my fault, my fault, my fault.
Allright, with that being said,
without further ado:
Okay, there is so much to cover with Etheopia, because they have gone through so many transitions
in just the past half century alone.
Okay, so first of all the flag is a horizontal tricolour of green, yellow and red
and historically these colours have been used eversince about the 13th century with this solomonic dynasty.
The green represents the hope for the future as well as the lands fertility.
The yellow represents piece and harmony between the various ethnic and religious groups that inhabit the country.
And the red stands for:
Strenght.
And:
Yeah, that was a great animation, wasn't it? Yeah, that was actually made by are favorite Irishman
Potter, thank you Potter for sending that!
Potter is still on his cross-global journey and I think he sent that to me from a hotel in Kazackstan.
I think he's camping in the middle of some desert in the Himalayas and last I checked he grew this sweet beard
and he shook hands with a cardboard cutout of Obama for some reason.
Thanks Potter, you rock.
And speaking of long term world travel, this episode is brought to you by one of the best resources
on information, on travel: Audible.com.
For those of you who don't know Audible.com, it's a great website with audiobooks and a lot of other
good resources. I totally recommend reading the book 'Vagabonding' by Rolf Potts.
He's this really cool guy who went all the way around the entire world in 6 weeks without any luggage.
And if you use the link 'Audible.com/Geography', you can get this book, or any other one for free with a
30 day trial. Once again: a free audiobook with a 30 day trial. Isn't that pretty cool? That's awesome right?
Yeah, go for it.
So once again, Audible.com, thank you so much for helping this out here at Geography Now
you are really appreciated, love you guys. Thanks a lot.
Now just like other flags, Etheopia contains the emblem, not the coat of arms, but an emblem on its flag.
The emblem is a yellow pentagram star on a blue circular shield.
The blue represents piece, the star stands for diversity and unity, and the rays of light represent prosperity.
Now, let's talk about historical symbolism.
This flag is actually kind of relevantly recent, as it was adobted in 1996.
Prior to that, they actually had a transistional period.
And then prior to that, they had a democratic republic, that didn't really administer the regions very well.
And then prior to that, they had the communist Derg.
And then prior to that the had the empire.
There were the 3 former emblems used during the transitional period,
the democratic republic period, and the communist Derg period.
As you can see there was a common theme of using labour and industrial images
to portray the hard working people group alongside with reeds and cultural symbols.
One important note to take is that the tricolours are actually the primary source of the Pan Africanst
movement which influenced a ton of other African states to follow along and do the same colour scheme
of green, yellow and red on their flags.
Many African states saw Etheopia as inspirational for having successfully fought agains so many outside
forces for so long.
Which brings us to that very short period of time during 1936.
Italy was the closest outside force that came to colonize Etheopia, even thought the occupation only lasted
5 years and it was never sure of conflict from the inside.
During the brief Italian occupation, they desingated 4 governements,
each with a coat of arms under the Italian empire.
Right as World War 2 erupted into full blown warfare.
It's debatable wheter or not you can actually call this brief period of time an Italian 'colony',
but most people around the world would call it at best an unsuccesful occupation that didn't last that long.
Which brings us to the Etheopian empire.
As mentioned in the Ethiopia episode, Etheopia was part of the Etheopian empires and kingdoms
that spent millennia in the past.
The flag of the empire used the lion of Judah in the centre with the same colour configuration.
In the last years the lion lost its crown and the cross-staff was changed into a spear
until the communist Derg came in deposed the empire in 1974.
During that time they also had a coat of arms, which looked pretty intense.
It had lions, angels, swords, halos, a throne and a star of David with a royal orb with a cross
tons of Ge'ez writing and curtains.
And of course Rastafarians still use the lion of Judah flag as a symbol for their religion
and they still believe Haile Selassie is like a duty.
So that's about it. Etheopia has gone through a warzone of symbolic transistions,
but in the end, the green, yellow and red will always wave proudly in the air.
This has been Flag Friday. You've just been flagged.
Stay cool, stay tuned.