Trump Wants To Buy Greenland. Here’s the Last Time the US Bought Territory

“Red, White, and Blueland.”

That’s what one Republican lawmaker says Greenland should be called if President Trump follows through on his bid to annex the territory. 

Rep. Earl Carter (R-Georgia) on Monday introduced legislation that would authorize Trump to negotiate the purchase of Greenland from Denmark, an idea the president has floated for weeks. (Trump has also suggested that Canada could become a state.) 

The governments of Denmark and Greenland have both opposed the idea. A satirical petition calling for Denmark to purchase California reportedly had more than 200,000 signatures as of Wednesday morning. The back-and-forth has cast a spotlight on the rare phenomenon of countries buying territory from other countries. 

The last time a country sold its own territory may have been in 2017, when Egypt transferred ownership of two small islands in the Red Sea to Saudi Arabia. Some have speculated that the deal was part of a $22 billion aid package. 

US, Denmark Have a History of Land Transactions

There are few examples in the past century of countries explicitly selling territory. In 1963, West Germany paid the Netherlands for the return of territory it had ceded in the aftermath of World War II. In 1958, Pakistan paid Oman for the port city of Gwadar. 

The U.S. and Denmark aren’t strangers to this kind of purchase. The last time the U.S. bought territory was in 1917, when it paid Denmark $25 million for the Danish West Indies—now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

America has expanded its territory through land purchases more than most countries. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 involved France transferring ownership of about 828,000 square miles of territory spanning 15 present-day states, including the entirety of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. The addition of Greenland, the world’s largest island at roughly 836,000 square miles, would be the single largest addition to American territory in history.

Alaska was purchased from Russia in the 1860s in one of the largest land purchases of all time. The U.S. also compensated Spain and Mexico for damage related to wars that resulted in the annexation of Florida, Texas, and all of the Southwest.