There are 196 countries in the world today and virtually none of them have purple on their national flag. Throughout history, purple was never used to represent a kingdom, civilization or empire.
So what's wrong with purple??? 😒 ☺
it's such a popular colour today, why would no country use it in their flag?? 🚩
Well the reason is really quite fascinating and simple... 💯
Purple was just far too expensive, no country has purple on their flag because up until 1800's purple was worth more than its weight in gold. The colour purple has been associated with Royalty 👑 and wealth 💵. In fact, Queen Elizabeth 1 forbade anyone except members of the Royal 👑 family to wear it.
The elite status of purple comes from the rarity and cost of the dye originally used to produce it.
The dye originally used to produce it comes from the trade route of Tyre whi is now modern day Lebanon. Traders obtain the dye from a small sea snail 🐌 that was only found in the Mediterranean. Lots of work went into producing the dye, as many as 10000 snails 🐌 were needed to produce 1 gram of purple dye.
Since only royal and wealthy rulers could afford to buy and wear the colour, it became associated with the emperial classes of Rome, Egypt and Persia.
Thus because of it's prize, nations couldn't afford putting it on their flags.
However it became accessible to lower class about a century ago. This was after 18 years old William Henry Perkin in 1856 accidentally created a synthetic purple compound while attempting to make an anti-malaria drug.
He noticed that it can be used to dye fabrics, so he patented it, manufactured it and became really rich.
Purple became mass produced and lost its value but the country flags remain the same.
Since 1900 a handful of new national flags have been designed and few of them such as Spain, Nicaragua, have opted to use purple i their flags 🎌.
Hopefully you found this interesting.
Sometimes the simplest of questions have the most fascinating answers..
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