New Worlds: Do You Have a Flag?

The comedian Eddie Izzard has a bit in her show Dress to Kill where she characterizes colonialism as sticking a flag in the ground to claim a place, then ignoring the assertion of the locals that their home is their own because, well, they don't have a flag, do they? While obviously exaggerated for the purpose of comedy, the idea in play there isn't without basis in fact. Nowadays, flags are the…