THE STATES of South Africa, the United States, and Brazil were either formed or significantly reconfigured during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. But amid state consolidation, national loyalty remained largely divided or nascent. Primary political allegiance had been long given to the British Empire or Afrikaner republics in what was to become South Africa, given to each state and to regions in the United States, and diluted by loyalty to Portugal within Brazil. As political institutions were reconfigured in each case, elites were eager to unify national loyalty to central states – to turn Afrikaners and British-descendant settlers into South Africans, Virginians and New Yorkers into Americans, royalists and republicans into Brazilians. Official definitions of membership in a single nation-state did not immediately produce popular allegiances accordingly.

Symbolism developed and encouraged emergent loyalty to the central polity. Flags were emblems of such unified nationalism encouraged by the state. But in each case, the national flag also represented pictorially the process by which previous allegiances were formally incorporated. The flag of South Africa included a miniature British Union Jack and banners of the two Afrikaner republics on a backdrop of the colors of Holland, thus symbolizing the hybrid nature of an emerging nation built upon previously divided loyalties. Similarly, the flag of the United States included a stripe for each of the original thirteen colonies and a star added for each state, symbolizing the federal unity of localized authority and allegiance.