President Donald Trump has made no secret of his ambition to annex Greenland while leading an administration that’s only the latest in a long list that wanted to do just that. To wit, in 1868, then-Secretary of State William Seward proposed acquiring the world’s largest island, by far, from Denmark to help “command the commerce of the world.”

By modern Greenland’s admission on its Visit Greenland website, Denmark was “unable to act” during the German occupation of World War II, and so “the USA took over the defence” of the icy north Atlantic island by establishing air bases there. After the war, the United States put up $100 million for the purchase of Greenland, an offer for Denmark’s then-colony, now a more self-governed entity, that the continental European nation rebuffed.