The first flag associated with the state of Serbia was a personal standard used by a medieval Serbian king in the 13th century. It belonged to King Stefan Vladislav who ruled from 1234 to 1243. This standard became the archivellium of the modern Serbian flags. However, it is clear that the Serbian flag is also influenced heavily by the Pan-Slavic Colors of red, white and blue, and thus white was added to the blue and red used in by King Stefan. When the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was proclaimed, the coat-of-arms of the Serbian king was added to the civil flag to form the state flag. The coat-of-arms and its symbolism dates to the 13th century Orthodox Saint Sava who advocated the establishment of a Serbian archepiscopacy to counteract pressure from the Vatican in Rome for Serbia to convert ot Roman Catholicism. The saint used the Ocila, in English known as a "firesteel." This tool was used in religious services to hold incense embers close to relgious icons, and was an important element in Orthodox liturgy in opposition to Roman Catholic liturgy. Since that time, the coat-of-arms of both the monarchy and the state itself used these nationalistic symbols.
After World War II, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was taken over during a coup d'etat by the communist league led by Josep Braz Tito. Tito became the ruler of Yugoslavia which was renamed as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The government of Yugoslavia was set up as a federal republic consisting of six national republics. Ideally, all of the republics were equal in power to the others. However, the Socialist Republic of Serbia was the defacto dominant republic. After Tito's death in 1980, a power struggle ensued that eventually led to the dominance of a Serbian nationalist party under the leadership of Slobadan Milosevic They wished to re-create the Yugoslav federation as a Serb-dominated state. This led the other constituent republics to rebel and one-by-one declare their independence from Yugoslavia. Civil strife followed, especially in Bosnia and the Serrbian province of Kosovo, where the Serbs attempted to assert political and social dominance over the majority ethnic communities in those areas. Serbia's assertion of dominance, and the civil wars that they induced, eventually completely dissolved any vestiges of Yugoslavia. By 2003, only a fragile union between Serbia and Montenegro remained intact. Yet, even this union dissolved in 2006 when Montenegro voted to separate. The Serbian parliament voted to declare Serbia as the successor of the Yugoslav federation. This new state adopted the old symbols of the pre-Tito Kingdom of Yugolslavia, including its flag and coat-of-arms. |
