Posted on Thursday, March 20, 2025

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by Barry Casselman

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President Trump’s stated desire to make the island of Greenland a U.S. territory has been greeted with some surprise and scorn on both sides of the Atlantic, but the fact is that it wouldn’t be the first time the Americans acquired an island from Denmark (which owns the huge North Atlantic island landmass), and for the same reason of strategic military security.

In 1672, a Danish company in the Caribbean took control of St. John and St. Thomas, adding nearby St. Croix in 1733. These three islands just to the east of Puerto Rico became known as the Danish West Indies, and soon they were a major rum and sugar producer.

Danish plantation owners imported and used African slaves to produce rum and sugar, and from 1750 to 1850, the islands’ trade flourished. However, by the mid-19th century, U.S. domestic sugar production severely diminished the Danish Caribbean islands’ trade, and their prosperity abruptly ended. Slaves were emancipated in 1848, but most of them continued to live in poverty, and the islands became a burdensome expense for Denmark.

In 1864, Denmark attempted to trade the Danish West Indies to Prussia. But that endeavor failed, and negotiations then began to sell the island colony to the U.S., which had at the outset of the American Civil War taken an interest in the Danish islands as a naval base.

The Danish parliament ratified the sale of St. Thomas and St. John to the U.S. for $7.5 million in 1867, but the U.S. Senate, then embroiled in the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, failed to ratify the sale.

In 1899, negotiations were resumed, and the U.S. agreed to buy the islands for $5 million. This time, however, it was the Danish parliament which balked at the deal.

Finally, in 1915, a U.S. labor leader visited Copenhagen and convinced the Danes that living conditions in the Danish West Indies had become disastrous. The Danish parliament no longer wanted to support the distant colony. Since Denmark and the U.S. at that time were both neutral in World War I, then raging in Europe, the Danes felt an urgency to transfer the islands to the U.S. before they entered the war. The Danes feared that the sale of the islands to the U.S. might provoke Germany to invade their small country.

Nonetheless, in 1916 the sale was finalized by both sides after months of secret negotiations. The U.S. paid Denmark $25 million in gold (worth about $800 million in today’s dollars).

Notably, Denmark also demanded as a condition of the transfer that the U.S. waive any claims it might have to Greenland. Because of earlier explorations of Americans Charles Francis Hall and Robert Peary, the U.S. then had a potential claim to northern Greenland.

Heavily involved in the building of the Panama Canal (completed in 1914), the U.S. concluded that the nearby Danish West Indies were more important than distant Greenland, and it agreed to the Danish demand.

The treaty was signed on August 4, 1916, at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City by the Danish minister and the U.S. secretary of state. The U.S. Senate ratified it on September 7. Denmark held a referendum on December 14, and the Danish parliament ratified the agreement on December 22. Ratifications were formally exchanged on January 17, 1917. President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation on January 25. Danish King Christian X also issued a proclamation on March 4.

On March 31, a warrant for $25 million in gold was presented to the Danish minister in Washington, D.C. It should be noted that the price of gold on that date was $35 an ounce. On March 14, 2025, the price of gold reached $3,000 an ounce for the first time.

The 1917 purchase of the Danish West Indies underscored America’s growing strategic ambitions and willingness to invest in territorial security. While Greenland was set aside in the deal, its significance would resurface decades later, proving that geopolitical interests are rarely settled for good.

Barry Casselman is a writer for AMAC Newsline.