Pavillons des principales puissances
/vexillology/atlas/1863
About
Pavillons des principales puissances is a French colour plate associated with the Encyclopédie militaire et maritime. It presents flags of the French Empire and of foreign powers as understood and labelled by its publisher in the early 1860s.
This page catalogues the plate as a historical source. Printed headings and captions are transcribed as printed, with the plate's capitals normalized to mixed case and accents restored; an English rendering follows each transcription in italics. The printed labels do not by themselves establish that every depicted design was official, current, or colour-accurate at the time of publication.
Source Catalogue
| Printed title | Pavillons des principales puissances |
|---|---|
| Collection date | c. 1863 (assigned). No date is printed on the plate. The prior cataloguing at the time of acquisition gave c. 1862; the date is revised here on internal evidence (see below). |
| Associated work | Encyclopédie militaire et maritime: Dictionnaire des armées de terre et de mer |
| Publisher | Armand Le Chevalier, 60 rue de Richelieu, Paris |
| Printer | Typographie de Cosson et Comp., 43 rue du Four-Saint-Germain, Paris |
| Creator of plate | Not stated on the plate |
| Language | French |
| Format | Colour illustration on a printed plate; the exact production process has not yet been established |
| Physical extent | One illustrated sheet; dimensions not yet recorded |
| Provenance | Acquired by purchase. The prior cataloguing dated the plate c. 1862 and described its contents as naval flags. Fuller provenance not yet recorded. |
| Contents | 62 flag drawings arranged in 49 extracted panels: 12 panels under Empire français and 37 under Puissances étrangères |
| Digital surrogate | Complete plate: JPEG, 1024 × 989 pixels. Extracted panels: PNG. |
| Catalogue status | Preliminary. Bibliographic attribution and individual flag analysis remain subject to revision. |
Editorial convention: Historical names are retained because they are evidence of the source's terminology. Modern identification and analysis will be added separately, without silently replacing the printed labels.
Internal Dating Evidence
The flag printed for the États séparatistes d'Amérique is the second Confederate national pattern (the “Stainless Banner”), adopted on 1 May 1863. The plate therefore cannot have been prepared before mid-1863, which rules out the c. 1862 date given in the prior cataloguing.
The paired presentation of unionist and separatist American flags suggests preparation before the end of the American Civil War in 1865. A single flag for the Kingdom of Italy (proclaimed 1861), a separate flag for Hanover (annexed by Prussia in 1866), and the heading Empire français (Second Empire, 1852–1870) are consistent with the same interval. Taken together, this evidence brackets the plate to about 1863–1865 and supports the assigned date of c. 1863.
Index of Flag Panels
The plate contains 49 extracted panels. Thirteen panels contain two distinct flag drawings, producing 62 drawings in total. Panels are presented in the two divisions printed on the plate, in the order in which they appear there, read left to right and top to bottom. Where a panel contains two drawings, both printed captions are given, separated by a middle dot. Select any image to open the full-resolution extraction.
Empire français · Puissances étrangères
Empire français
Puissances étrangères
Method and Next Stage
This preliminary index records what is present before interpreting it. Later study pages can distinguish the plate's printed attribution from modern polity names, compare each depiction with documented historical flags, and discuss discrepancies in colour, proportion, geometry, or status.
Several entries already invite such study: the description of the Sandwich Islands as a protectorate of England, the bordered yellow flag given for Cochinchine, and the labelling of the British ensigns by squadron (escadre) are examples of attributions and conventions that should be tested against documented history rather than taken at face value.
The first study is now available: the Sandwich Islands panel is examined on the Hawaii (Sandwich Islands) flag page, which places this plate's depiction beside the documented history of the flag.
Bibliographic References
- Pavillons des principales puissances, complete plate in the present collection; title, series, publisher, addresses, and printer transcribed from the sheet.
- WorldCat record for Encyclopédie militaire et maritime: Dictionnaire des armées de terre et de mer. Related 1868 edition.
- Digitized Encyclopédie militaire et maritime record. Google Books, related 1865 edition.
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