This Week In Vexillology #175

A late-breaking Sunday edition of This Week In Vexillology- and we're sticking around central Asia, this time to take a look at the flag of another former Soviet Republic- Azerbaijan! Balanced on the frontier between Iran and Russia, it's not that surprising that Azerbaijan has changed hands a few times down the centuries as various dynasties and kingdoms rose and fell, but it wasn't until The Qajar Dynasty lost the Russo-Persian War in the early 19th Century (you know the one, right?) that the area came under the control of the Russian Empire. That last about a century or so until the Russian Empire collapsed at the tail end of World War I and the ever so brief union of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan took place- the- wait for it- Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. Needless to say, that didn't last long and Azerbaijan declared the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in May of 1918. Lots of impressive milestones were set by the ADR right off the bat: it was ...