[DOWNLOAD] "Emblem of Our Country: The Red, White, And Green Tricolour." by Newfoundland and Labrador Studies # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free

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• Title: Emblem of Our Country: The Red, White, And Green Tricolour.
• Author : Newfoundland and Labrador Studies
• Release Date : January 22, 2008
• Genre: Reference,Books,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 399 KB

Description

BEFORE PINK, THERE WAS red. Much uncertainty and misinformation surrounds the origins of the Pink, White, and Green (PWG) which many people today see as the unofficial flag of Newfoundland. Thanks to a popular T-shirt which originated sometime in the 1970s or 1980s, people commonly refer to it as the "Republic of Newfoundland" flag, although Newfoundland was never a republic, nor was the flag associated with a republican movement during the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. The origin of the PWG is also commonly but erroneously traced to the Newfoundland Natives' Society (NNS), which was established in 1840 to promote the interests of native Newfoundlanders and act as a relief organization. The Society was non-sectarian and was comprised of middle-class Catholics and Protestants who felt shut out of power by wealthy merchants and British civil servants, but more importantly by immigrants or, as they termed them, "strangers." (1) Natives claimed that they were fighting against "the long continued attempts to place them below the level of others in the social scale." (2) The Society was popular in the 1840s and lasted until 1862. (3) Some subsequent authors have claimed that the NNS Flag was a pink banner with a green fir tree which became simplified into the PWG tricolour. This, however, is incorrect. As I argue here, it is possible to establish two things from the available evidence. First, the official flag of the NNS was a red flag featuring their shield which was at some time before 1856 simplified into a red, white, and green tricolour. (4) It was this tricolour, the Native Flag, which many people accepted as the first flag of Newfoundland, a banner flown to represent the colony and Newfoundland natives. As late as 1884, many Newfoundlanders flew this Native tricolour as the unofficial flag of the country. (5) Second, in attempting to find an origin for Pink, White, and Green, it is often overlooked that these were actually the colours of the Newfoundland Fisherman's Star of the Sea Association (SOS) established in St. John's in 1871. (6) The official SOS flag and sashes featured these colours, the latter resembling the PWG tricolour, and which may have been the origin of the colours of the current PWG. It is only after the establishment of the SOS that the PWG tricolour appears in the records. I have not to date seen evidence of pink being used by any other organization prior to 1871. In The Invention of Tradition Eric Hobsbawm points out that "'traditions' which appear or claim to be old are quite often recent in origin and sometimes invented." (7) Invented traditions consist of two parts: those "invented, constructed and formally instituted, and those emerging in a less easily traceable manner within a brief and datable period--a matter of a few years perhaps--and establishing themselves with great rapidity." (8) The PWG falls into this category, despite the claim that it has "belonged to the people of Newfoundland for at least 170 years." (9) When the NNS created its red silk flag in 1840, it was an official act of invention, the Society intended that their flag and shield would symbolize who they were as native Newfoundlanders. The Society repeated this when it simplified its flag to the red, white, and green tricolour. The SOS did the same when they created their flag in 1871. Both of these decisions conform to Hobsbawm's first type of invented tradition. That large numbers of people took the NNS tricolour as a national symbol in the 1860s is an example of the second, more spontaneous, and harder to trace type of invented tradition. This was also the case with the SOS colours which were used for their flag and sashes, and which became the PWG in the 1880s and 1890s.

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