PERSPECTIVES: Buying Danish Territory? It's Déjà vu All Over Again

Image: Canva AI take on Eric-the-Red in negotiation mode. And, no, Vikings did not have horns on their helmets!

James C.
Johnston Jr.

It is a historical fact that Denmark has sold a colony. I suppose that it is hard for anyone, not a historian, to think of Denmark as a mighty geo-political power, but over the last thousand years or so, Denmark was just that. No more powerful personality than Denmark’s King Canute ruled over Denmark, England, Norway , Iceland, Greenland, by extension and the exploits of Eric-the-Red, about the year 1000 C.E., and that monarchy also ruled over other significant and various bits of island real-estate. Denmark was reduced somewhat in area in Europe over the next millennia.  The most recent reduction of Denmark’s real-estate holdings in mainland Europe occurred in 1864 when the King of Prussia, William and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, decided that the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein, which made-up most of Southern Denmark, should become part of their Northern German Kingdom of Prussia.

Prussia then, in 1864, declared war on Denmark and overwhelmed the much smaller political entity with its powerful modern army forces swallowing-up the two Southern Danish provinces with ease as the Iron Chancellor, von Bismarck pushed his Prussian over-lord toward the throne of The Second Reich, the new German Empire that he would manufacture in 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors in the Royal Palace of Versailles after crushing France and Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War. Bismarck saw his King William crowned Emperor Wilhelm I of the new German Empire which would last only until 1918 and the end of World War I.

Denmark still owned some impressive real-estate in the wake of all of her troubles with Germany in 1864. And her royal family had married into the Imperial houses of Russia and Great Britain, whose queen was also Empress of India, and royal house of Greece and dozens of other semi-autonomous German States. Her King was related by blood and marriage to practically every European monarch. But the loss of Schleswig and Holstein still rankled. The Princess of Wales Alexandra was the daughter of the King of Denmark and married to Edward Prince of Wales, heir to the British throne and Uncle to the Kaiser, or Emperor of Germany, William II. It now was all in the family but……..

As the Victorian Age melted into the Edwardian Age, the world was undergoing a huge change. This was the height of the Age of Imperialism when the Empires, and kingdoms, and the odd republics set out to build world-wide empires. Even the relatively new little Kingdom of Belgium, only about 70 years old in 1900, had carved-out huge holdings in Africa worth billions of dollars in rich natural resources. King Leopold II of the Belgians owned these colonies as his own personal property and used the huge profits he made from his colonial real-estate holdings to support eight new palaces and estates peopled by his various mistresses of which he had at least eight.

Leopold II was a monster who was responsible for the killing and maiming of untold thousands of the indigenous people of the Congo and other holding that he had in Africa. It was Leopold II who ordered one hand of every Black African killed by his troops to be severed from the body so that he could calculate the number of bullets used to suppress any disturbance in his colonial empire. Leopold II insisted that no more than one bullet was needed per man killed to keep order. This was his economic-control-thing you see to manage the budget of his military establishment.

In this great Age of Imperialism, France had a world-wide empire as did Great Britain whose great poet of imperialism, Rudyard Kipling, complained of “The White Man’s Burden” to civilize the world as a very special preserve and also a sometimes-oppressive duty of the English! Such horrible racism was the norm in those days. Eventually Italy also got into the race for colonies after Italian unification in 1870. Foreign Minister Crispi and King Victor Emmanuel II took advantage of the real-estate opportunities in Africa by absorbing tens-of-thousands of square miles of territory, that the rest of Europe did not seem to want, like Libya. Things seemed to be going well for the Italians until her invading army was defeated and crushed at the Battle of Adwa by Emperor Ras Menelik II in the mountain passes of Ethiopia.

Some 20,000 Italian soldiers were taken prisoner by the Ethiopian Army and castrated then and then sent these hapless souls back to Italy as an object lesson in what would happen to naughty Europeans who would invade and attempt the conquest of the African Abyssinian/Ethiopian Empire of the descendants of Solomon and Sheba. Thirty-nine years later, Benito Mussolini, claiming the right and power to revenge this outrage of 1896 and victims of Adwa, invaded Ethiopia as its Emperor Haile Selassie appeared before The League of Nations to protest that self-same Italian invasion.

All that happened was that The Ethiopian Emperor received the sympathy of that body but nothing else. Italy joined Germany in walking out of this powerless international debating society. This pitiful and impotent organization of nations, that preceded The United Nations as an international representative peace organization, was just obviously a joke without any real power to enforce its rulings. The League of Nations was in reality nothing like what its spiritual father, President Woodrow Wilson, envisioned in 1919 in either its being or mission. When the United Nations came into existence in 1945, all of the League of Nations’ property was turned over to this new organization which I suppose was meant to show some continuity.

Imperialism in Europe really began about the time of Columbus’ inadvertent discovery of the Americas. Spain was the dominant world power from its unification in 1492 when it also began building its world-wide-empire which it held onto with a death grip until 1898 when the United States stripped her of it in what Theodore Roosevelt would call “A Splendid Little War”!

Indeed, it was a tidy little affair as these things tend to go in terms of it being relatively short 115 day war which was enthusiastically supported by President William Mc Kinley. When our quick victories were reported of Mc Kinley, he had to be shown on the globe where these conquests were actually located. Mc Kinley’s geographical skills were not very well developed. When Mc Kinley addressed Congress on the subject of the Spanish territories we had taken, he said, “I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight: and I am not ashamed to tell you gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed to almighty God for the light and guidance more than one night. And one night it came to me this way-I don’t know how it was, but it came: 1) That we could not give them [the Spanish colonies] back to Spain-that would be cowardly and dishonorable; 2) that we would not turn them over to France or Germany-our commercial rivals in the Orient-that would be bad for business and discreditable; 3) that we could not leave them to themselves-they were unfit for self-government- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all [all the colonies], and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace to do the best we could by them……….And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department (our map-maker) and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States…and there they are.”
Along with the Mc Kinley Tariffs, could this declaration before Congress in 1898 be a reason that Mr. Trump sees Mc Kinley as his favorite president? Does Trump also see the people of Greenland and the Canal Zone incapable of self-governance and in need of rescuing? How about Canada? Where does “The White Man’s Burden” fit in here? It is not probably wise to have a late 19th and early 20th century president as a model in 2025.

Portugal was also a great colonial power whose grasp stretch around the world with vast holdings in South America, thanks to Pope Alexander Vi who drew the Line of Demarcation on the mid-1490’s dividing the unclaimed non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal! That’s how the Portuguese got Brazil by the way. The English and the French were not impressed by Alexander’s Line and decided to carve out empires for themselves without Papal Blessings. England and France fought “The War For Empire” between 1756 and 1763 pretty much all over the planet.

Both of these nations founded colonies and grabbed hundreds of bits of world-wide real-estate between them in the 18th and 19th Centuries. The Netherlands and its Dutch East India Company also had a huge empire because of their excellent fleet of warships and commercial shipping in the 17th , 18th, and early 19th centuries. The Germans got into the race for colonies in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa after German Unification in 1871. German East Africa, Togoland, Cameroons, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika, and many Pacific Islands like part of Samoa fell under their sway. After World War I was concluded Britain got most of these colonies from the Former German Empire except for places like Togoland and the Cameroons which went to France.

If you have ever been entranced by Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I, written for my Cousin Richard Aldrich’s wife, Gertrude Lawrence, look beyond the music. It was the story of the King of Siam, Mongut I, who wanted to keep his country, today known as Thailand, from being turned into a British Protectorate, because the English had a habit of declaring random nations they deemed too weak to defend themselves as nations that needed “Protection”. So, they all but annexed them as “Protectorates”. In this country, when certain individuals sell “protection” to businesses and vulnerable individuals, we call it something else which is generally recognized as a criminal activity. In fact, in-law, this is known as operating “A Protection Racket.” This sort of thing is generally frowned on.

All of this international “Land-Grabbing” by Western Nations was generally called “Imperialism”. In 1914, European powers, the United States, and to a certain extent Japan, were still all engaging in this practice. By 1916, World War I was in full flower. By that time, the United States had already spent time maneuvering Panama into breaking away from Columbia and selling us the Isthmus of Panama so that we could build a canal. By 1916, the United States was worried that Germany might grab Danish real-estate in the Caribbean [yes this body of water is still the Caribbean Sea] area and would threaten the Panama Canal. Denmark was at peace with Germany in 1916, but the Danes had little reason to trust German integrity after their experience in the War of 1864 with Prussia, The three islands in question, St. Thomas, St. John, and St Croix, were called The Danish West Indies.
In 1952 when I was eight years old, I frequently visited my friend Mr. Schmidt who lived a quarter of a mile down the street had once been the top lawyer in Latvia between the wars and had also been second in command to Alexander Kerensky in Russia between the two Russian Revolutions of 1917. Mr. Schmidt lived down the street from me with his daughter Valentina and son-in-law Jack who had also been lawyers in Latvia.

We had a lot of conversations about European history and politics in those days even though I was only eight years old at that time. In my eight-year-old naiveté, I once referenced “The Prussian Empire”. To this Mr. Schmidt responded, “My Boy, Prussia was never an empire. It had been the Dutchly of Brandenburg then in 1701, it became the Kingdom of Prussia. The King of Prussia was also to become the emperor of Germany after 1871 you see. Now, never forget that,” and for the next 72 years, I never have.

I had always sought the company of older people when I was a child so that I could learn something. I found people my own age dreadfully dull and childish, mostly because they were children I suppose. Now, I love to talk to young people, because they have so much to teach me. I discovered this while I was teaching school right here in Franklin starting in 1966. Between the ages of 22 and 56, I was taught a great deal by my students for which I will always be grateful to them. My students were very kind and patient with me. I hope that I returned the favor.
Mr. Schmidt taught me a great deal about the world which he inhabited and in which he actually knew many of the principal players first hand because he was a very high ranking government official both in Russia and in Latvia. He was the first man to tell me about how we bought what we now call The Virgin Islands from Denmark back in 1917 when they were still known as the Danish West Indies.

I knew that we had increased our country’s land area and filled-up the central part of North America by using the National Checkbook. I also knew that we bought the huge Louisiana Territory from France, after they stole it back from Spain, after Spain had received it from France. In fact, the French Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, forced us into buying Louisiana by closing the port of New Orleans to us about 1802. The French rightly thought that if they held onto Louisiana the English would end-up grabbing it from them because of the vast superiority of the English fleet of about a thousand warships ranging from sloops-of-war to mighty 100+ well-gunned ships-of-the-line!. Jefferson offered ten million dollars for New Orleans alone, and French Foreign Minister Talleyrand asked the United States negotiators why they did not buy the whole multi-million-acre-parcel stretching all the way up the Mississippi about 2,000 miles to Canada and as far West as a whole flock of Crows could fly for another five million. Fifteen million dollars for the whole Louisiana Parcel was going to be “The Buy of The Century!” Such a deal you could not even dream about. When Robert Livingston asked just how far West the Louisiana Territory stretched, Talleyrand replied, “Push it as far as you can.” And, we did.

The United States also paid for the Mexican Cession and the Gadsden Purchase in 1848 and 1853 respectively after we defeated Mexico and extended slavery into much of our new territory like Texas in contravention of Mexican Law. In 1867, we also bought Alaska from Russia for Seven Million-Two-Hundred-Thousand dollars. So as I stated, we did buy a lot of land. Purchasing property is always better than getting it by conquest.

Back in 1819 there was the Adams-Onis Treaty when we paid five millions to Spain [ om paper anyway] for most of Florida. Actually the money was kept by us to pay off claims to those poor slave holders of the Carolinas and Georgia for the loss of their human property who had the effrontery to run away to the safety of Seminoles in Florida! Imagine all of that wealth running off to seek freedom! How unchristian! How evil!

As I have previously stated, n 1916, our fear was that the Germans would seize the Danish West Indies and pose a threat to the Panama Canal even though the Germans were not at war with the Danes at that time or us either. The United States offered Denmark twenty-five million dollars in gold coin for the three Danish islands. A plebiscite was held in Denmark on this proposal, and the sale was overwhelmingly approved. But the Danes in the Danish West Indies were not so sanguine about the transaction or pleased by the move. They had strenuously objected to having their island-homeland sold to the United States. Many of them had roots going back deeply into the 17th Century when their ancestors first came from Denmark to settle there. These settlers had imported many Black Africans as slaves to work the island plantations. The descendants of the involuntary-African-transported-people were, for the most part, not as committed to remaining Danish subjects.

The European Islanders carried on a campaign against sale of the islands that included issuing an impressive poster stamp showing the St. Thomas Harbor with the words, “Dansk-Vestindien/ Protest Mod Salget,” which translates to, “Danish West Indies/ Protest Against the Sale.”

But the sale went through never-the-less, and the United States’ Treasury Secretary McAdoo wrote a check to the Danes for “Twenty-Five Million Dollars in Gold Coin.”

In 1917, when the United States took possession 0of their niw property, most of the European Danes went back to Denmark with their family treasures, three centuries of history, and a great deal of grief and anger. Now the islands are a resort and a honeymoon destination for many. I don’t think that Greenland would be quite like that. I really can’t see honeymooners rushing off to The Arctic Circle to celebrate their nuptials. But as it happens, Greenland has held a fascination for me since 1957 when I read Peter Freuchen’s books about the place and the Seven Seas. I was fascinated by the wild customs of the place, the frankness, openness, and fairness of the indigenous people, and by Freuchen’s best friend Knud Rasmussen and the wild adventures they had in living in such a wonderful way with nature where every disadvantage could be turned into an advantage. For example, if you find that you are being buried in snow in a blinding Arctic storm, build a nice warm igloo out of it, and light a stone lamp to warm the place up. There was always food all over the place if you could be somewhat adaptive. Snow also provides a natural and fast bit of transportation for your dog sled to run on very smoothly. If the runner on you transport breaks, just repair it with a nice piece of frozen fish of seal skin fitted into the wounded runner binding altogether again. All will be well as soon as your repair freezes into place. It will work just fine! I think that part of me always wanted to migrate to friendly Greenland and the rest of me cried out, “Are you crazy?”
I could write a book about the crazy and wonderful people of the place where if you arrive in a village in the middle of the Arctic night, which lasts for months, you could wake the whole village place up, break out the coffee and have a party in the under-ground huts! Greenlanders were always ready for a party in the middle of the winter or amy other time as well. What can be better than that!

Greenland is the ideal place for somebody with energy, great will, imagination, and great adaptability, and willing to adapt to the life-style of the country. The people who have lived there, for over a thousand and more years, both indigenous and Danish in origin, love the place and not without reason. If you read the great books by the Rasmussans and Peter Freuchen, you too can see why Greenlanders love Greenland. The people of this amazing place have no desire to become citizens of the United States. They don’t really even want to be governed by Denmark never mind by the “Brave New World” of the United States of Donald Trump.

Yes we bought the Danish West Indies in 1917 at the end of The Age of Imperialism for a large sum in gold coin, but that was because Denmark was convinced that they were going to lose it one way or another just like the French were convinced that England was going to take Louisiana from them in 1803. Don’t forget that the English tried to take Louisana away from us in 1815, but Andrew Jackson showed them that was not going to happen anytime soon.

This Greenland thing will be an interesting bit of history to watch play out. I am ending my eighty-first year of life with my curiosity intact. When I think of all the changes just in my short lifetime when compared with the four plus billion year age of earth, I marvel as to what great changes have taken place. National states have come and gone, and when I was born back in 1944, Adolf Hitler was still waging war against civilization. Mussolini was head of the puppet Salo Republic. This Fascist republic of Il Duce was named for the town of Salo which was situated on the shores of beautiful Lake Guarda. Here is where Mussolini held out his last hope for his independence and fascist ideals. Thank all the gods that he lost. His struggle was obviously futile, and the Japanese were at this time also contemplating a long war of attrition, but the Japanese intelligentsia knew that this imperialistic struggle was essentially unwinnable. The Russians were mounting a devastating hammering of Hitler’s Eastern Front and forging forward in an irresistible push to the West. That was the world in my birth year. Within a week of my coming into the world, we invaded Europe on “D” Day.

We did once buy a three island Danish colony, but Woodrow Wilson was president then, and it was a different imperialistic world one-hundred-and-eight-years ago. Will Denmark, a fellow member of N.A.T.O. who does not want to sell us Greenland, let things go quietly. I think not. Things may become very interesting indeed. If Trump wants to push the issue of buying or otherwise getting Greenland, it could get pretty interesting in all the wrong sorts of ways. So, hang in there. It could be a very bumpy ride. But it has its own fascination-you know-like a demolition derby! You just can’t take your eyes off it. Isn’t history interesting? And by the way, The Canal Zone is still on “The Donald’s” wish list.