A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols by Tim Marshall

Vexillogical history, with an emphasis on violence and jingoism

I’ve always had an interest in flags and heraldry, probably because I’m a graphic designer. Flags are like the ultimate logos in terms of impact and endurance (in some cases). Even though they’re not always well designed, I find it interesting to learn about the stories behind how flags were created and the intended meanings of the colors and symbols. Not surprisingly, therefore, Tim Marshall’s book Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags is right up my alley. It was published in Britain in 2016. The American edition was retitled A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols.

In this book, Marshall discusses the origins and symbolism of numerous flags. Most of them are national flags, but he also covers some organizational flags and a few anomalies like the checkered flag of racing. For the purposes of discussion, Marshall divides these flags into families, like evolutionary branches with similar characteristics—for example, flags based on the American flag or the British Union Jack, the tricolors and crosses of Europe, and flags exhibiting the pan-Arab, pan-African, or pan-Colombian (Latin American) color schemes. Marshall doesn’t discuss the flag of every nation of the world, but he does cover around a dozen flags in each category. Presumably, he has chosen the flags of more populous nations or those with more interesting origin stories.

The book starts out rather underwhelmingly with its history of the United States and United Kingdom flags. These are two of the most important flags in the world, but English-language readers are also likely to already know much of what Marshall has to say about them. The chapter on the U.S. flag reads like a Cub Scout manual. The farther afield that Marshall looks, to smaller nations outside of North American and Europe, the more likely the reader is to find surprising, untold facts and histories. The book does contain many interesting stories about how flags were created and how their designs have been shaped by political events.

In fact, the talk of flags often seems like just an excuse for Marshall to discuss politics, a subject on which he is very knowledgeable. He has worked as a journalist in many nations of the world, including several war zones, so he offers his personal perspective on the nations and political developments covered in the book. Sometimes he’s a little too openly biased in his opinions of particular nations and peoples, when a journalist should maybe keep his cards a little closer to his vest. As the title of the book indicates, Marshall certainly makes an effort to emphasize the negative aspects of flags—the violence they inspire, conflicts over flag burning, the co-option by right-wing factions, warmongers, racists, and so on. Marshall seems to revel in reports of conflict and patriotic sacrifice. It is undoubtedly true that people take their flags very seriously. If fewer writers glorified the notion of dying for one’s flag, however, maybe fewer people would be slaughtering each other over symbolic pieces of cloth

Marshall has written a series of popular books on geography for general audiences. In A Flag Worth Dying For, he strives to make the subject of flags interesting to readers interested in current events and recent history. Personally, I would have preferred a nerdier book that focused more on the flags themselves rather than politics and war, and a book with a more comprehensive selection of nations rather than Marshall’s somewhat arbitrary choices. For those with an interest in vexillology (the study of flags), Alfred Znamierowski’s World Encyclopedia of Flags is a book that I enjoyed, or you can browse through the treasure trove of information at crwflags.com/fotw/flags/.