Why Is “Red Tape” Associated With Bureaucracy?
The English word “bureaucracy” originated in the early 19th century, referring to an administrative system where decisions were made by a group of nonelected officials. Today, the term can refer to the regulatory system of any public or private institution, including corporations, organizations, and governments. And in a society where laws are upheld based on a set of established standards and practices, keeping everything running smoothly can require an almost mind-boggling array of rules and regulations.
Such an excessive amount of official systems and processes is often referred to as “red tape.” But how and when exactly did that colorful term become associated with bureaucracy?
Red Tape Was Used To Bind Official Documents
The use of red tape to bind documents has been noted for centuries, but its exact origins remain murky. The practice may date as far back as the 11th century, to the red, ribbonlike cloth that English clerks used to secure official documents. For hundreds of years, correspondence was tied with tape and the ends were sealed with melted wax, so that the contents couldn’t be read by anyone other than the intended recipient. The only way to access the documents was to cut the seal, which around the 18th century led to the common idiom “cutting through the red tape.”
Some historians suggest the use of red tape for binding government records may have started later, during King Charles V’s reign over Spain in the 16th century, when important documents were secured with red tape to distinguish them from other papers. The color red has long signified royalty and wealth, and red dyes such as kermes and cochineal produced a deep scarlet that were favored by the rich and powerful. Considering the high cost these dyes at the time, it’s unlikely that red ribbon was used for anything other than the most important official documents, at least initially.
Although red tape bindings had already been around for some time, the first written reference in English to the words “red tape” appeared in 1658, in an advertisement in the Publick Intelligencer describing a lost “little bundle of Papers tied with a red Tape.” By the end of the 17th century, the tradition of using red tape to secure official documents had crossed the Atlantic and become standard practice in the American colonies as well. In 1696, a law was passed that stated records of public land boundaries in the colony of Maryland were required to be “seal’d with his Excellency’s Seal of Arms, on a Red Cross with Red Tape.” Other important government documents, including the Stamp Act of 1765, were also secured with red tape.
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“Red Tape” Became a Negative Term for Bureaucracy
Though a regal red binding once signified order and organization, the term “red tape” eventually took on a derogatory connotation, meaning an overly complicated process of rules and paperwork. This meaning of the term has been around for almost 200 years. One of the earliest known uses is found in the 1850 work Latter Day Pamphlets by Scottish author Thomas Carlyle. He wrote, “From all corners of the wide British Dominion there rises one complaint against the ineffectuality of what are nicknamed our ‘red-tape’ establishments, our Government Offices, Colonial Office, Foreign Office and the others.”
Despite the growing negative association, the practice of using red tape to bind important documents was widespread by the end of the American Civil War. According to the National Archives Foundation in Washington, D.C., Americans first used the term “red tape” in reference to bureaucracy because of how difficult it was for Civil War veterans to obtain their tape-bound records in order to file pension claims. While the term “red tape” predates the Civil War era, it became an increasingly popular phrase in English through the 19th and 20th centuries.
Red Tape Bindings Have Found a New Life as Mementos
Though we still refer to “cutting through the red tape” today, the tradition of binding documents with colorful cloth has been replaced by other methods, including digitizing original records. Some archivists still use twill tape to bind documents, but they opt for undyed tape rather than red, because the red ink can fade or rub off onto the paper. However, red ribbon binding remained in use for a surprisingly long time — until the 1980s — and hundreds of miles of red tape have been used to bind billions of historic documents.
For more than two decades, the National Archives has been shifting the use of red tape from its historic files to its gift shop. The idea to monetize this bit of governmental history was conceived in the 1990s by a volunteer who was removing the red bindings from Civil War documents so they could be transferred to microfilm. In 1997, the first snippets of red tape were sold in the National Archives gift shop for $5. Today, those bits of faded fabric have been incorporated into a wide range of jewelry and mementos for tourists who want to own a piece of bureaucratic history.
