Mindanao Nearly Swapped for Greenland

I came across a Segundo Eclar Romeo piece in the Philippine Daily Inquirer published January 20 that more than a century ago, Mindanao and Palawan were casually floated as tradable assets in an internal United States diplomatic letter, suggested as part of a geopolitical swap for Greenland.

Yes, you read that right. 

In 1910, then US Ambassador to Denmark Maurice Francis Egan sent a letter to Washington proposing what he himself described as a “very audacious suggestion”. In this proposal, the US could acquire Greenland and the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands) in exchange for Mindanao and Palawan, which were, at that time, under American colonial rule. 

The idea was that Denmark would receive the southern Philippine islands and then trade them to Germany in exchange for Northern Schleswig, a region Denmark had lost to Prussia in 1864. The proposal amounted to a three-way colonial chess move – one that treated territories with entire peoples and cultures as mere geopolitical pieces on an imperial board. 

This proposal was never presented to Denmark or discussed with Philippine colonial authorities. But it reveals much about the prevailing mindset of US diplomacy in the early 20th century – one in which strategic territories could be swapped or traded, not unlike rare cards between collectors. 

It also casts a long shadow into the present, especially in light of the current campaign of the Trump administration, which again expressed interest in acquiring Greenland by purchase and even with veiled threats of military coercion. While this modern iteration may sound implausible or laughable, it reminds us that the idea has long been simmering in the strategic imagination of the US foreign policy establishment. 

It has been said that to many Filipinos, the idea of swapping an island – even one as far-flung as Greenland – for Mindanao, home to over 26 million people and a cradle of unique cultural and historical identity, is not only unimaginable but also offensive. Mindanao is not a bargaining chip, period! 

Yet, the 1910 letter proves that this kind of thinking existed – and perhaps still exists – in circles where power outweighs principle. That Mindanao was ever proposed as a tradable item – without the knowledge or consent of its people – is not merely a historical footnote. It is a sobering reminder of how colonial logic treated territories as objects, not homelands. 

And that colonial logic is embedded deep within the Donald Trump psyche.

In Shenzhen in Guangdong province, China: 

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