Subscribe
Donald Trump, the president-elect of the United States, has expressed an interest in buying Greenland.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that, “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”
Trump made the statement while announcing PayPal co-founder Ken Howery as the US’s Ambassador to Denmark.
The US’s interest in acquiring Greenland could start a whole new geopolitical ‘Great Game’ on top of the world in the fast-thawing Arctic. However, the United States is no stranger to buying and acquiring substantial territory since it began its journey as an independent nation after the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
The Louisiana Purchase was one of the largest acquisitions of territory by the US, which ended up doubling the country’s area.
The prelude to the Purchase was already set by the time the US got independent. The fledgling 13 colonies had spread from the eastern seaboard over the Appalachian Mountains and right upto the Mississippi river.
“Since 1762, Spain had owned the territory of Louisiana, which included 828,000 square miles. The territory made up all or part of fifteen modern U.S. states between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. The Pinckney treaty of 1795 had resolved friction between Spain and the United States over the right to navigate the Mississippi and the right for Americans to transfer their goods to ocean-going vessels at New Orleans. With the Pinckney treaty in place and the weak Spanish empire in control of Louisiana, American statesmen felt comfortable that the United States’ westward expansion would not be restricted in the future,” according to the US The Office of the Historian, an office of the United States Department of State within the Foreign Service Institute.
But across the Atlantic, Napoleon Bonaparte, who lorded over most of Europe, wanted the same territory. According to the office, he planned to revive the French empire in the New World by recapturing “the valuable sugar colony of St. Domingue from a slave rebellion and then use Louisiana as the granary for his empire”.
St Domingue is known as Haiti today.
“France acquired Louisiana from Spain in 1800 and took possession in 1802, sending a large French army to St. Domingue and preparing to send another to New Orleans,” the US Office of the Historian notes.
There was apprehension in Washington about having the more-powerful French in control of New Orleans. Thomas Jefferson, the then US President, noted, “There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.”
However, things did not go as planned for Napoleon. The slaves in Haiti, under the brilliant leadership of Toussaint L’Overture defeated the French and other western powers and set up the first free black republic in the world in 1804.
“Meanwhile, the French Army in St. Domingue was being decimated by yellow fever, and war between France and England still threatened. Napoleon decided to give up his plans for Louisiana and offered a surprised Monroe and Livingston the entire territory of Louisiana for $15 million. Although this far exceeded their instructions from President Jefferson, they agreed,” the US Office of the Historian says.
Signed on April 30, 1803, the Louisiana Purchase meant the US purchased 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River for $15 million. That is roughly 4 cents an acre, according to the US National Archives.
The Louisiana Purchase was the first among many acquisitions of land that the US would make in the 19th century.
The last of these ‘purchases’ was the Gadsden Purchase.
“The Gadsden Purchase is a roughly 30,000 square-mile region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that was acquired by the United States in a treaty signed by American ambassador to Mexico James Gadsden on December 30, 1853. The treaty was ratified, with changes, by the U.S. Senate and signed by President Franklin Pierce with final approval by Mexico on June 8, 1854. The purchase was the last major territorial acquisition in the contiguous United States,” the US National Archives notes.
“Gadsden’s Purchase provided the land necessary for a southern transcontinental railroad and attempted to resolve conflicts that lingered after the Mexican-American War,” the US Office of the Historian notes.
The Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, had been prompted by the US annexation of Mexican Texas.
Peter the Great, Tsar of the Russian Empire, had dispatched Vitus Bering on the Great Northern Expedition to discover lands that today make up the Russian Far East.
Bering and his men reached till the Commander Islands and also became the first Europeans to reach Alaska.
“Beginning in 1725, when Russian Czar Peter the Great dispatched Vitus Bering to explore the Alaskan coast, Russia had a keen interest in this region, which was rich in natural resources and lightly inhabited. As the United States expanded westward in the early 1800s, Americans soon found themselves in competition with Russian explorers and traders. St. Petersburg, however, lacked the financial resources to support major settlements or a military presence along the Pacific coast of North America and permanent Russian settlers in Alaska never numbered more than four hundred. Defeat in the Crimean War further reduced Russian interest in this region,” according to the US Office of the Historian.
“In 1866, the Russian government offered to sell the territory of Alaska to the United States. Secretary of State William H. Seward, enthusiastic about the prospects of American Expansion, negotiated the deal for the Americans. Edouard de Stoeckl, Russian minister to the United States, negotiated for the Russians,” the US National Archives note.
The two parties agreed on March 30, 1867, that the US would pay Russia $7.2 million for the territory of Alaska.
The US thus got hold of nearly 600,000 square miles for less than 2 cents an acre. But it was not until the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896, that the Americans truly recognized the value of Alaska, ‘the last frontier’.
“The purchase of Alaska in 1867 marked the end of Russian efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America, and became an important step in the United States rise as a great power in the Asia-Pacific region,” the US Office of the Historian notes.
