Bendera2 dari Perserikatan Bangsa Bangsa: a UN flag chart for Indonesia, 1953

An Indonesian-language chart of United Nations member flags filed with the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia, catalog date 7 May 1953. The blue UN flag sits at the centre; around it, the archive transcribes 60 country labels, the Soviet Union and two Soviet republics among them (NAID 5729947).

A chart with no slogan

This sheet has a title and a list. The United Nations flag is placed at the centre, and member flags are arranged around it, each with a small, rotated country name in Indonesian. There is no headline beyond the title, no caption, and no enemy.

BENDERA² DARI PERSERIKATAN BANGSA BANGSA

AFGHANISTAN; ARGENTINA; AUSTRALIA; BELGIA; BOLIVIA; BIRMA; REPUBLIK SOSIALIS SOWJET BELORUSIA; KANADA; CHILI; TIONGKOK; [...] INDONESIA; IRAN; [...] REPUBLIK SOSIALIS SOWJET UKRANIA; URUGUAY; UNI AFRIKA SELATAN; MUANG THAI; KERADJAAN INGGERIS; AMERIKA SERIKAT; UNI REPUBLIK² SOSIALIS SOWJET; VENEZUELA; YAMAN; YUGOSLAVIA

[English, as given by the archive:] FLAGS OF THE UNITED NATIONS.

The record

The National Archives files the chart in Record Group 306 among the U.S. Information Agency's posters distributed in Asia, under a catalog date of 7 May 1953. FRAME names the agency and its State Department predecessor program as maker. The sheet itself, as transcribed, carries no imprint, and the archive classes the source as blurred. Its purpose field is "Warn or inform."

The archive also holds an English chart under the title Flags of the United Nations, dated 5 May 1953, and a Chinese one dated 20 October 1953. This page covers the Indonesian sheet only.

What the chart argues

FRAME tags it transfer: the UN emblem at the centre lends the organization's standing to the flags around it. The archive's own description adds that the sheet makes no argument beyond its title, and the transcription bears that out. The country list is broad. It includes the United States and the United Kingdom, and also the Soviet Union, the Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet republics, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. The archive identifies the flag for China, labeled TIONGKOK, as that of the Republic of China.

As a reference sheet it is easy to check, which is its strength. The persuasion is in the arrangement. Whatever a reader in Indonesia, itself on the list, thought of the body at the centre is invited to carry over to the ring of members, and the sheet puts the United States and the Soviet Union in that same ring.

Other sheets from the same file used the United Nations as their frame: U.N. Day poster 7 for Japan describes cattle vaccination, and the Japanese Veto! sheet from the same month turns the UN emblem against the Soviet Union. The U.S. Information Agency hub describes the wider program.