
‘Greater Canada’ includes Greenland
In the past few weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump’s wish to acquire Greenland has put the Arctic territory in the news like never before.
It has also given armchair geographers opportunities to indulge their fantasies and pet projects on the island’s future.
Trump’s musings were thin on detail. Was he going to buy Greenland? Or just take it? He didn’t say. But some years ago when he first floated the idea, he had hoped to buy it.
At that time, Trump’s offer was simplicity itself compared with a plan that had come out of Washington more than 100 years earlier. But that plan — though it came unofficially from the capital of America — was not for the United States to end up with Greenland. Instead, Canada would acquire it — without paying a penny.
Think of it as “Make Canada Great Again.”
Robert Stein had led one expedition to the Arctic by hitching a ride on a ship supporting an expedition by Robert Peary. He had spent two winters in Greenland and returned to America filled with ideas about the promise of the Arctic. In that respect, he was like Icelandic-Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, but without the charisma.
Stein never returned to the Arctic.
He busied himself promoting his pet projects of monetary reform and world peace. As usual, he promoted his ideas by publishing pamphlets. And, as in the past, his ideas found no traction with governments or the public.
But, like a true fanatic, he maintained his interest in the North and from the comfortable vantage point of Washington he concocted a hare-brained scheme. This one would involve a daring feat of diplomacy involving Canada, Britain, Denmark, Germany and the United States.
Stein had long been worried about tensions that were building between Britain and Germany. He knew also Germany had occupied North Schleswig, previously a part of Denmark, since 1864. And he knew Denmark wanted it back.
One solution might have been for Germany to trade it back to Denmark in return for Denmark’s colonial possessions in the West Indies. But the United States would not hear of Germany acquiring territory so close to America.
But what about a trade for Greenland? No; no one wanted to hear of that, either; it violated the Monroe Doctrine of the United States.