Following is an excerpt from the book Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller:
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P 78.
is important to note that, while the British Empire as a world government lost the American Revolution, the power structure behind it did not lose the war. The most visible of the power-structure identities was the East India Company, an entirely private enterprise whose flag as adopted by Queen Elizabeth in 1600 happened to have thirteen red and white horizontal stripes with a blue rectangle in its upper lefthand corner. The blue rectangle bore in red and white the superimposed crosses of St. Andrew and St. George. When the Boston Tea Party occurred, the colonists dressed as Indians boarded the East India Company’s three ships and threw overboard their entire cargoes of high-tax tea. They also took the flag from the masthead of the largest of the “East Indiamen”—the Dartmouth. George Washington took command of the U.S. Continental Army under an elm tree in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The flag used for that occasion was the East India Company’s flag, which by pure coincidence had the thirteen red and white stripes. Though it was only coincidence, most of those present thought the thirteen red and white stripes did represent the thirteen American colonies—ergo, was very appropriate—but they complained about the included British flag’s superimposed crosses in the blue rectangle in the top corner. George Washington conferred with Betsy Ross, after which came the thirteen white, five-pointed stars in the blue field with the thirteen red and white horizontal stripes. While the British government lost the 1776 war, the East India Company’s owners who constituted the invisible power structure behind the British government not only did not lose but moved right into the new U.S.A. economy along with the latter’s most powerful landowners.
“There I saw a picture of Queen Elizabeth I and the flag of the East India Company of 1600 a.d., with its thirteen red and white horizontal stripes and its superimposed crosses in the upper corner. What astonished me was that this flag (which seemed to be the American flag) was apparently being used in 1600 a.d., 175 years before the American Revolution.” – B. FullerBy pure chance I happened to uncover this popularly unknown episode of American history. Commissioned in 1970 by the Indian government to design new airports in Bombay, New Delhi, and Madras, I was visiting the grand palace of the British fortress in Madras, where the English first established themselves in India in 1600. There I saw a picture of Queen Elizabeth I and the flag of the East India Company of 1600 a.d., with its thirteen red and white horizontal stripes and its superimposed crosses in the upper corner. What astonished me was that this flag (which seemed to be the American flag) was apparently being used in 1600 a.d., 175 years before the American Revolution. Displayed on the stairway landing wall together with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth I painted on canvas, the flag was painted on the wall itself, as was the seal of the East India Company. The supreme leaders of the American Revolution were of the southern type—George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Both were great landowners with direct royal grants for their lands, in contradistinction to the relatively meager individual landholdings of the individual northern Puritan colonists.
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