My Jeopardy! desk calendar had an answer recently about a land purchase, where the question was “Who is James Gadsden” (P.S. check out the painting of James Gadsden here: James Gadsden - Wikipedia - he doesn’t look anything like I would have imagined, but then again he probably didn’t look like so young when he was negotiating with Mexico.) For non-US people, James Gadsden arranged to have the USA buy land from Mexico, this land now forms the southern parts of the states of Arizona and New Mexico.
I have a couple of questions about land purchases:
Has a land purchase between nations ever turned out to be a bad deal? In retrospect, it always looks like the buying country made out very well from the purchase.
How many countries have purchased large (or small) amounts of territory from another country? Any other famous examples? (In the US, we have the Louisiana purchase, and the purchase of Alaska)
Would such a land purchase be possible today? e.g. would the US or the European Union be able to find a poor sub-Saharan African country willing and able to sell a large chunk of territory? If this were possible, it would seem to me that there is almost no way for the buying country to lose from the deal, since land is a resource that will always become more scarce.
The native Americans didn’t understand the language or concept of many land deals (how these deals holds up in court today is beyond contempt), and they didn’t make out so great, so a bad deal for them.
I meant had a land purchase ever turned out to be a bad deal for the buyer?
In the case of land deals with Native Americans, I assume that most of those were coerced, and not really falling into the category I am interested in.
I don’t see how land is “always going to become more scarce”; the quantity of land is pretty much fixed.
Can a land purchase be a bad deal? Of course it can; you can pay more for the land than is warranted by its capacity to produce wealth. Individuals do this all the time; what makes you think that states can’t?
Has a sovereign land deal ever turned out badly for the purchaser? I dunno. But there are certainly countries who found their colonial possessions to be a drain, and eventually dumped them. Some of those colonial possessions could well have been purchased.
Note, though, that to the extent that a land deal is freely entered into the opening assumption would be that the land deal is in the interests of both parties. Why else would they enter into it?
Some low-lying coastal and island countries aren’t so confident.
Besides that, scarcity can mean the ratio of supply to demand, not just absolute supply, so if acres remain fixed while population continues to rise, land is becoming ever more scarce.
Well, is it so certain that the U.S. came out on top of the Gadsden Purchase? Would our country really be all that different if we didn’t have Yuma and Phoenix was a border city?
What’s $10 million in 1854 worth today? A couple billion?
The point of the Gadsen Purchase was to get a suitable route for a transcontinental railroad. The South wanted to route to go through the slave states. This would help in the expanison of slavery. It was already doubtful it would ever take in New Mexico and just a bit less doubtful it would take in what was to become Arizona.
A transcontinental route from San Diego to New Orleans would’ve been an economic boom. It might’ve come about had the Civil War not pushed the route from Council Bluffs to San Francisco.
Many Americans thought the Gadsden Purchase was a bad deal. Some people in the south and in California were unhappy that the negotiations included hanging William Walker out to dry over Sonora. The US Army was not happy about the US officially acknowledging to Mexico that it had failed to protect them against the Apache and Comanche. But the biggest objection was that most people in the north didn’t want to add more slave territory, open up a potential railroad between California and the South, and protect British railroad and canal interests.
Of course in the long run, it looks like a win for the US. But in the long run, just about any country that paid for land that it later had to give up due to colonial independence could argue that the money was wasted. Except that then you’d have to look at how much value they got for the land during the time they held it, how much it cost them to hold onto it as long as they did, and whether they ended up with any post-independence benefit from their long association.
It really depends on where you draw the line.
There have probably been few or no treaties that were just a straight money for land swap. Look at all the other provisions in the Gadsden Purchase. And consider that the whole thing was negotiated under the unspoken threat of war, the direct threat of Texas-style independence movements, and the possibility of future Walker-type expeditions (which the US didn’t have any intention of backing, but the Mexicans didn’t believe that).
On the other hand, if you include any treaty at all where any land goes one way and any money goes the other, then you’d have to say that the US sold southern Alberta to the UK in 1818, or that the UK sold Java to the Netherlands in 1824, even though that wasn’t the real focus of either of those treaties.
And things can get even more complicated. Look at the foundation of Singapore. The British East India Company paid the Sultan of Johor for land on which to build a trading post, which later became a British colony, and then an independent country. Does that count as the UK (or Singapore?) buying land from Johor?
If you look over a list like this category at Wikipedia, a good number of them involved money changing hands, but you’d have to make a judgment call as to how many count as what you’re looking for.
A naked money-for-land deal probably wouldn’t fly today with the citizens of the US or the EU. But beyond that, I guess there’s nothing really to stop it. If the selling country were run by an entrenched dictator (so it didn’t matter what his citizens thought), and that dictator’s government were recognized by the international community (so there’d be nobody with any standing to argue internationally), who would stand in the way?
More realistically, compensation for loss of land as part of a border adjustment (either a friendly one or a peace treaty) would be a no-brainer, although some governments might prefer to give the money as “humanitarian foreign aid grants” or something rather than call it compensation. For example, in 1945, Molotov signed an aid grant to Poland the same day he and Morawski signed the Polish-Byelorussian border treaty, but there was no direct official linkage, and I’d guess that would be the most common way for governments to deal with things today.
You’re thinking of President Buenaventura Báez. He negotiated for US annexation three times, and the third time he actually signed a treaty with Grant, only to have it rejected by the US Senate.
But that wasn’t about selling the country to the US for money. Annexation was the only alternative to being invaded by Haiti and/or going bankrupt from war debts incurred fighting off the repeated Haitian invasions. And the plan had overwhelming support in Santo Domingo; it’s just that Grant was a pretty bad communicator and never successfully explained why the US should go along with it.
Santo Domingo never really wanted to be independent in the first place. They originally revolted against France to join Spain. When Spain abandoned them, they immediately applied for annexation to Colombia. During Báez’s various terms in charge, he negotiated with France, Spain, and the US for annexation. His arch-rival Santana was also pushing for Spanish annexation, and he actually succeeded, but Spain left again. There was even a small faction pushing for British annexation. Pretty much anything was preferable to a never-ending struggle against Haitian domination.
The USA bought the Danish West Indies in 1917 for $25 million; they’re now the U.S. Virgin Isles. They had previously almost bought them in 1867 and 1902.
And later, after WW2, the USA also tried to buy Greenland* (which they had occupied) for $100 million from Denmark as well.
You didn’t ask (because you probably know), but others have: states routinely buy property in other states (for embassies, high commissions, trade offices, residents, etc.) without engaging in a transfer of sovereignty.
(There was an amusing incident last decade where some newspapers reported that the Queen was buying a condo in New York to install Princess Di safely out of the limelight. What had actually happened was that the Canadian government had bought a residence for the use of some official or other, the legal purchaser was “Her Majesty the Queen in right of Canada,” and someone leapt to conclusions.)
I think there are too many factors and “what-if” questions. The Russians selling Alaska to the US back then made a good deal. There was no way of knowing then that the oil underneath would one day make this worth millions, or the eventual strategic value in the cold war. (I think they called it Sewards folly in the US, because they thought he had wasted good money for unusuable land).
When France sold land to the starting US, they did so because they had little use for it right now, but needed the cash for the war they were fighting. If they hadn’t sold, or gotten less money, the war might have ended different.
Moreover, the US had already shown to not give a shit about treaties and other people’s rights anyway, so selling the land was a smarter and better option then having the US start a war over it, or just walk in and grab it anyway, some years later.
Even if a dictator on one side would be willing to sell, I doubt any European country would want to buy (can’t speak for the US). There is an economic reason beside humanist/ liberal reasons that all the colonial powers gave freedom to their colonies after WWII: it wasn’t worth it. Long transport routes, little to show for it, and an economy at home that had moved away from primary to tertiary sector.
If we would need the raw resources in that piece of land, we already get those, with official treaties or bribery and extortion from private companies. Or the Chinese way, invest and build a road and factory in exchange for reaping the fruits the next 20 years. (In fact, a lot of speculators are buying land individually in African countries, to speculate over food -while the native Africans are driven away from their land to starve. Documentation for illiterate peasants in corrupt poor African nations is not in their favour).
If we need land to settle people on, most people don’t want to leave Europe with its comfort and infrastructure. Those that do, can buy the land privately.
We no longer need a big amount of land to show off that we are bigger (We show off by being economically stronger or nicer or smarter or whatever. :))
So there’s no good reason to buy land for a modern nation.
No the railroad was built, it was just built later as the transcontinental route of the Southern Pacific, which later gain control of the Central Pacific, but is now part of Union Pacific. It’s still in heavy use now. The Gadsen purchase was a good deal for the U.S.
Actaully, the USA has conquered almost none* of it’s current territory from foriegn states- during the great imperialist period of the late 19th century was often called in as a neutral.
Take a look at this map:
Original Colonies- ceded by Treaty.
Louisiana Purchase- purchase
Adams–Onís Treaty (Spanish Ter)- purchase/treaty at point of gun
Oregone Ter- Treaty.
Texas- joined by treaty
“Mexican cession”= purchase at point of gun
Alaska- Purchase
Nothing by outright military conquest, but some areas by “gun point deal”.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed with us having a gun to Mexicos head, but they- at that period in time- got a good price for lands they had little control or use for, and if Mexico had not gotten that cash infusion from the “sale” they doubtless would have gone bankrupt and dissolved into many smaller states- during that period quite a few areas had tried for independence and some (Central America for example:eek:) had split off.
Here, you are talking about Sewards Folly, and really, there’s no idea at all on *anyones *part that the purchase there was due to a threat of possible conquest by America. Alaska wasn’t even next to the USA. We just had the most money. Russia hadn’t even really settled it but (wiki) “Russia was in a difficult financial position and feared losing Alaska without compensation in some future conflict, especially to the British, whom they had fought in the Crimean War (1853–1856). While Alaska attracted little interest at the time, the population of nearby British Columbia started to increase rapidly a few years after hostilities ended, with a large gold rush there prompting the creation of a crown colony on the mainland. The Russians therefore started to believe that in any future conflict with Britain, their hard-to-defend region might become a prime target, and would be easily captured. Therefore Tsar Alexander II decided to sell the territory. Perhaps in hopes of starting a bidding war, both the British and the Americans were approached, however the British expressed little interest in buying Alaska.”
So, you’re simply wrong. Alaska was NOT sold to the USA as “*the US had already shown to not give a shit about treaties and other people’s rights anyway, so selling the land was a smarter and better option then having the US start a war over it, or just walk in and grab it anyway, * but because " the US had already *been *shown to give a shit about treaties and other people’s rights, so selling the land was a smarter and better option then having *Great Britain *start a war over it, or just walk in and grab it anyway”.
And, GB likely didn’t bid on Alaska for that very reason, they hoped to snarf it up for free.
If fighting a war and then forcing the other side to sign a treaty acknowledging your territorial gains isn’t conquering, it’s hard to imagine what is.
And that includes more than just the cases you cited.
Only after the Brits lost the Revolutionary War.
Not internationally recognized until the Mexicans agreed to it after losing the Mexican-American War. And, even if you do count Santa Anna’s signing of Texan independence (which Mexico never did, because he’d been deposed before he did so, and because the government of Mexico never ratified it), that in itself was signed at gunpoint, after Mexico had lost a war, against a bunch of American settlers who’d moved into their land.
And don’t forget the territory added during the Spanish-American War. Or the various Pacific islands that the US unilaterally annexed and only had the claims internationally recognized after defeating Japan in WWII.
And all this without even bringing up the natives.
Really, the Louisiana Purchase (which for the French was mostly a matter of “giv[ing] England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride”) and the Alaska Purchase were the only cases in your list where neither war nor threat of war were part of the negotiation.
That said, the Alaska Purchase was a silly example for constanze to bring up, because it’s actually the closest thing to a pure purchase in US history.
