Weekly Flag Challenge: Discussion & Entries

FLAG CHALLENGE #156: Flags of the Decolonized

This weeks challenge is to create a flag of a recently decolonized country. How you interpret decolonization is up to you, the flag just has to be the first national flag used by your country.

Submissions Open: Now
Submissions Close: 17th December 2016
Voting Period: 18th December - 24th December 2016

For more details on general rules, click and read the FIRST PAGE
 
Republic of Tuva
Tıva Respublika

In TTL, Tuva was one of the newly independent states that emerged from the wreckage of the USSR in 1991. It became a parliamentary republic that has established very close ties with China, partly for historical reasons, partly for economic reasons and partly for the fear of its former overlord, Russia.

The flag of Tuva, designed in 1992 uses the traditional colors of blue, gold and silver. Blue stands for the endless Tuvan skies and the traditional morals of Tuvan nomadic herdsmen, while gold and silver stand for both the precious metals that are found in Tuva and Buddhism, the main religion of Tuva people. The eight-spoked wheel is an ancient symbol of the Noble Eightfold Path, used already by the first Tuvan revolutionaries in the 1920s.

Tuva.png
 
Australian Free State

After the dismemberment of the British Empire in the Eurasian War (1937-1944), the former Commonwealth of Australia became a Japanese protectorate and member of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. As the desolation of the war years receded, tensions rose between the Japanese occupiers and the numerically superior Australians. With the 'Chinese Ulcer' drawing more and more Japanese soldiers to mainland Asia, an ostensibly independent government was inaugurated as the Australian Free State in 1967 in an attempt to placate the Australians. It was to last little more than two years before street protests, fired on by Japanese troops, became a national uprising.

aus flag copy.png
 

Don Quijote

Banned
Just in time! :)

Südwestafrika


German South-West Africa, now simply known as South-West Africa, is a former colony of the German Empire, having become independent in 1971. Germany first took over the region during the scramble for Africa, consolidating its control over the following few years. Notably this included the organised wiping out of a large part of the native population, with the Herero people suffering the most. For the Germans at least, however, this did end all serious attempts to overthrow their rule, bringing stability to the colony.

South-West Africa was nearly lost to the British in late 1914, some months into the Danube War. Triggered by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand by a Bosnian Serb in Sarajevo, it resulted in Austria-Hungary invading Serbia, with Montenegro and Russia joining in against the Habsburgs. Covert German involvement, the poorly thought-out idea of the Kaiser, resulted in the annexation of German New Guinea by British and Australian forces as a clear warning to back down. A similar event almost took place in German South-West Africa, but fortunately an armed stand-off along the border with South Africa ended peacefully.

As the decades passed, colonies of various nations began their struggles for independence. Portugal suffered the worst of this, with Communist insurgencies in Mozambique and Angola, the latter spilling over into German South-West Africa by the early 1960s, in the form of the Ovambo Liberation Front. The Germans, while initially backing the local government they had installed in 1951, began to see that direct German occupation was hindering rather than helping efforts to contain the uprising. In 1971 the territory dropped the 'German', and became simply 'South-West Africa'. The flag of the newly independent nation was largely based on the colony's old coat of arms, in official use since the 1920s, with the Afrikaner Bull acting as the country's national animal, in place of the Bateleur Eagle used by the OLF.
swa2-png.300174
 
Cross-posting the challenge:

FLAG CHALLENGE #157: Mapocalypse Now

Maps on flags. Everyone hates maps on flags. Is there anything that could be salvaged from this stupid idea? Can someone design a flag with a map on it that actually looks decent... or maybe even amazing?

Your flag submission to this challenge should feature a map as a design element. The map in question can be stylized, but not overly so (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagoshima_Prefecture for an example that would not fly in this challenge).

If you are not sure whether your idea fits this challenge, you can PM me first to ask.

Submissions Open: Now
Submissions Close: 1st of January 2017
Voting Period: 2nd of January - 8th of December 2016

For more details on general rules, click and read the FIRST PAGE
 
The United Explorers Guild
UEGFlag.png


The United Explorers Guild (UEG) was founded rather by accident. Amerigo Vespucci was the young cartographer meant to chart out a rough map of the Columbias, but his voyage was cut short when a native raid resulted in the damaging of several ships and many of the crew. Forced to turn back to Europe to seek fresh sailors and supplies, the expedition was disgraced, and would not receive proper funding for some time. Disheartened, Vespucci eventually sank into a depression, and was drinking heavily when he invited several cartographers and sailors to come with him. The men agreed, and grew incredibly drunk. Come morning, after discovering they may or may not have set part of the tavern on fire, the group realized they had also drawn up a rather inarticulate charter. The opening line of this document, which itself is kept as almost equal holy writ as the guild's later, official charter contained the famous line: "You will not finance an expedition? Fine! We shall make our own expedition! With ventiuna and courtesans!"

After reviewing the document sloppily titled "A Charter for a Guild for the Greatest of Explorations, as written by Explorers united in Cause," the group realized that they had drafted a proposal to make an international guild for exploration and cartography, with the intent to draw all men of fortune and with a thirst for the unknown into their ranks, and monopolize the nations of Europe into using their services, securing decent payment, good equipment, and continuous exploration. Realizing that it was not the craziest of ideas, they decided to refine the proposition and pursue it. As several of the sailors were wealthy officers, and many of the cartographers came from aristocratic families that could afford to allow such pursuits, the pooling of resources was done with a fair amount of ease. Officially becoming the United Explorers Guild, the groups received their first job under the crown of England, and they provided a detailed mapping of the Northeastern Upper Columbia, discovering various lakes, ridges, and making contact with various tribes. While the Guild would fail to claim fame for proving the Columbias to be a separate continent entirely, they did gain fame for mapping the horn of Africa in detail and sailing all the way to India and beyond, mapping out Southeastern Asia, and their discovery of Vespuccia is perhaps their most well known feat.

The Guild became powerful, as they provided an easy way for young men in many countries to find adventure. No need to join the Navy, no need to attend expensive schools for cartography and herbology. They could join the UEG and receive an apprenticeship, learning all the necessary skills before being put on a crew and rented off to a foreign power. The Guild's true height would come in the 19th Century, as technology allowed for the exploration of the African, Pacific, Indian, and Amazonian interior, and the Guild's services were suddenly highly sought after. In the modern era, the UEG become more diversified and expansive, handling most Antarctican expeditions to keep the continent neutral from American, Danubian, and Wedayanese influence. Pursuits in the Great North have also been achieved, and the UEG not only found both poles, but had men stand on each simultaneously. The UEG is also still a place for young people to seek adventure, and it is common for young college students to join the Guild and travel the globe, setting up relief efforts and exploring jungles and natural wonders. And of course, the Guild is still ever pushing the frontier; as an international and neutral body, it is the primary exploration group for outer space. UEG satellites and probes are sent out regularly, and bases established on the moon are one of its many proud accomplishments, renting out the space to various nations for research, and UEG partnership is nearly required for any nation's space program to get off the ground. The Transnational Orbital Research Installation (the TORI or "tor-ee") is another Guild effort, a station that orbits the Earth and hosts scientists and cosmonauts from around the world. Recently, the Guild has announced Expedition Ares, a project for establishing manned bases on Mars.

The flag of the UEG is easily recognizable, but was for a time ever evolving. Initially a tailed red flag to serve as an ensign, the flag then gained the guild's name in various languages, usually with its motto "Terras Irradient" (meaning "let them illuminate the lands" in reference to Isaiah 6:3, but also a play on removing Terra Incognita from maps) somewhere on the map. Eventually standardized to have the guild name with the motto between the words in smaller font, what truly became the symbol of the Guild was the map. A gold map on black (another play on illumination) was put on the red, and it was constantly updated, often by the expedition itself, which would hire a seamstress to edit it as the discovered islands and coastline. When major expeditions came back, the flag would be updated, done with ease by the Guild's flowing coffers. Pictured is a flag from the voyage of the UEGS Vigilance, which discovered Vespuccia, sewing what they had guessed was the continent's shape onto the flag, along with several large islands north of it.
 
Republic of New Guinea(1968-onwards)
Instead of becoming part of Indonesia, Netherlands New Guinea maintains it's independence in the early 60's. In 1968, in order to further solidify it's status as an independent state from the netherlands, the state is renamed to simply New Guinea. Because of Pan-Papuan sentiments across the island, Australia grants independence to the eastern part of the island much earlier in this timeline, in 1972, which immediately unites with the western half. The newly united country is renamed the Republic of Papua. However, because of a theory that says that Papua actually means "negation of union" the name is changed back to Republic of New Guinea, or just shortly, New Guinea. Because of it's rich multiculturalism, influenced both from the indigenous population and the culture of the first world; and because of it's unique separation across the years, the flag has been designed in way to express these very things.
The field is split in 3 pales with the middle one being slightly wider. Each color denotes a heritage: the orange stands for dutch heritage, the red stands for english, and the black stands for the indigenous population. The three stars represent the original partition, each being placed roughly where the parts originally were. The land is colored yellow, which stands for prosperity.
Papua.png
 
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