In 1946, the last time the United States tried to buy Greenland, Washington offered $100 million in gold bullion and a land swap that would have transferred ownership of Alaska’s Point Barrow to Denmark, he recalls. . Political in an article recalling previous attempts to retake the island now desired by US President-elect Donald Trump.
“Although we owe America a lot, I don’t think we owe them the whole island of Greenland,” replied Danish Foreign Minister Gustav Rasmussen in 1946 when he rejected the Americans’ offer.
The offer was made after the Chiefs of Staff and State Department officials decided to move the world’s largest island, located on the shortest polar route between Washington and Moscow, in the 51st state was a military necessity for the United States. Time magazine called the island the largest “stationary aircraft carrier” in the world.
The Americans felt that the island was worth nothing to Denmark and that it had been neglected. This argument has been, in fact, a common theme in previous US offers to buy Greenland. “There are very few people in Denmark who have a real interest in Greenland, economically, politically or financially,” announced William Trimble, a senior State Department official.
This did not convince the Danes. All political parties in the country rejected the proposal, Rasmussen called it absurd in a parliamentary debate.
Meanwhile, the Americans were equally stubborn in their refusal to withdraw from the American bases previously established on the island in 1941 to ensure that Nazi Germany could not use Greenland to attack the American continent, nor to take control of important raw materials. This refusal led Denmark to join NATO.
A long line of suitors
Trump is just the latest in a long line of claimants, not just Americans, who have knocked on Denmark’s door to claim the island. However, Trump is the first to not rule out the possibility of military action.
“If you had told me 10 years ago that I would be doing an interview about Greenland, I would not have put it at the top of the list of possible topics of media interest,” says historian John C. Mitcham of the Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. for Politics. “But it’s also really fascinating, a little worrying, that we hear echoes of the past with the Victorian language of sovereignty and security.”
Critics may mock the president-elect for his expansionist ambition to annex Greenland, but geopolitical considerations and military logic have led American diplomats to try to buy the island.
The first time was in 1867, when Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had just bought Alaska from Russia, made the idea. It was “worthy of serious consideration,” he said.
An ardent expansionist, Seward, who also longed for Canada, commissioned a favorable survey to argue his case. “The final document — which Seward printed and distributed to lawmakers — was far from objective in its conclusions,” historian Jeff Ludwig, director of the Seward House Museum in Auburn, wrote in a 2019 article.
Unfortunately for Seward, his proposal to expand the United States only raised the opposition of a very hostile Congress, which was at odds with President Andrew Johnson, who had assumed the presidency after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Congress had already rejected Seward’s proposal to buy the Danish West Indies, then bought by Copenhagen in 1917 for $25 million in gold and renamed the US Virgin Islands.
Later, in 1910, backstage discussions took place between Washington and Copenhagen, part of a very complicated exchange proposal involving the exchange of islands in the Philippines and the West Indies with North Schleswig between the United States, Germany and Denmark.
Other countries interested in Greenland
Not to be forgotten, Britain and Canada also coveted Greenland, with London trying to secure a Danish agreement during World War I to gain veto power should Copenhagen ever decide to sell, in part to ensure that the The United States does not have it.
This effort came after British and Dominion leaders agreed among themselves in a secret meeting in 1917 that Britain should buy Greenland for the Canadians as part of a post-war global territorial adjustment. “The Canadian government had its own more reserved annexationist plans during the First World War, geared towards the idea of creating a Canadian North American empire,” says Mitcham. “And he became very interested in Greenland,” he adds.
“When the United States begins to show its own interest in Greenland, then the British Foreign Office begins to withdraw its support for Canada’s ambitions,” says Mitcham.
The Danes also showed a moderate interest and emphasized their determination to retain ownership of the island, officially declaring sovereignty over all of Greenland in 1921. Norway disputed Danish sovereignty in 1931, but its claim was was rejected by the Permanent Court of International Justice, part of the League of Nations.
