Thailand Flag
Thailand Flag Has Seen Many Changes Since The Days Of King Monkut
The Thailand flag has five stripes arranged horizontally in blue, white and red colors with the red and white colors on top, and below which is the blue stripe that is twice as broad as the red and white stripes. There is a certain significance attached to each color of the flag and the red and white and blue colors each signify the nation, religion and king respectively, and are considered the country’s motto, albeit not officially so.
Current Flag Was Adopted In 1917
The current Thailand flag was adopted by the country as recently as on 28th October in the year 1917 and it is referred to as a tricolor flag and is certainly a far cry from the earlier Thailand flag that was being used during the time when the country was referred to as Siam and which at that time was most probably just a simple red colored flag that was used in the time of King Narai. This red colored flag was also adapted by the country’s navy and there were different symbols used such as a white colored chakra symbolizing the weapon of their god Vishnu, and within the chakra a white elephant was used.
However, the first known Thailand flag was created around the year 1855 by a King named Monkut or Rama IV in which a white elephant was depicted and which was a royal symbol that was set to a red ground and which helped to make the Thailand flag more distinct in order to improve its international image. Then, in the year 1916, the flag got a design change which is its current design though it still has the middle color as red.
In any case, a year later there was another change to the Thailand flag and this time the middle color was made dark blue, which was considered auspicious according to Thai astrology and which symbolized the day that King Vajiravudh came into this world. However, some people consider the change to blue color as being symbolic of a show of solidarity with the Allied Forces during the First World War who also had the same colors in their flags.
An interesting feature of the Thailand flag is that it closely resembles the national flag of another country (Costa Rica) that had earlier adopted those very colors about eleven years prior to the creation of the Thailand flag though these flags differed from one another in that the blue and red colors in the flags were inverted.