Triband (flag)

A triband is a vexillological style which consists of three stripes arranged to form a flag. These stripes may be two or three colours, and may be charged with an emblem in the middle stripe. Not all tribands are tricolour flags, which requires three unique colours.

Outside of the name, which requires three bands of colour, there are no other requirements for what a triband must look like, so there are many flags that look very different from each other but are all considered tribands.

Some triband flags (e.g. those of Germany, Russia and the Netherlands) have their stripes positioned horizontally, while others (e.g. that of Italy) position the stripes vertically. Often the stripes on a triband are of equal length and width, though this is not always the case, as can be seen in the flags of Colombia and Canada. Symbols on tribands may be seals, such as on the Belizean flag, or any manner of emblems of significance to the area the flag represents, such as in the flags of Argentina, India and Lebanon.

A tricolour (BE) or tricolor (AE) is a type of triband design which originated in the 16th century as a symbol of republicanism, liberty, or revolution. The oldest tricolour flag originates from the Netherlands, whose successor's design later inspired the French and Russian flags.

The flags of France, Italy, Romania, Mexico, Ireland and Paraguay were all adopted with the formation of an independent republic in the period of the French Revolution to the Revolutions of 1848, with the exception of the Irish tricolour, which dates from 1848 but was not popularised until the Easter Rising in 1916 and adopted in 1919.

The first association of the tricolour with republicanism is the orange-white-blue design of the Prince's Flag (Prinsenvlag, precursor of the flags of the Netherlands), first depicted 1575 and used by William I of Orange-Nassau in the Eighty Years' War, establishing the independence of the Dutch Republic from the Spanish Empire. Its red-white-blue successor is the oldest tricolour flag still in use. The flag of the Netherlands inspired both the French and Russian flags, which in turn further inspired many tricolour flags in other countries.

Though not the first tricolour flag, one of the most famous, known as Le Tricolore, is the blue, white and red (whence also called Le Bleu-Blanc-Rouge) flag of France adopted in 1790 during the French Revolution. Based on a 1789 design of the Cockade of France, it was easy to construct and also stood in a visual opposition to complicated royal banners of the Ancien Regime.

With the formation of French client republics after 1795, the revolutionary tricolour was exported and adopted more widely in Europe, by the Republic of Alba 1796 (red-blue-yellow), Cisalpine Republic 1797 (Transpadane Republic, green-white-red), Cisrhenian Republic 1797 (green-white-red), Anconine Republic 1797 (blue-yellow-red), Roman Republic 1798 (black-white-red), Helvetic Republic 1798 (green-red-yellow; canton of Neuchatel 1848), Parthenopean Republic 1799 (blue-yellow-red), and Principality of Lucca and Piombino 1805 (blue-white-red). Thus providing the format for many of modern Europe's national flags, from the flag of Italy, to the flags of Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and others around the world such as the flags of India, Cameroon, Chad, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, and Nigeria.