The calculus of barren earth: How colonial monopolies justified the subjugation of Greenland

“ And whether its inhabitants may be called happy, or no? All things well pondered, both the affirmative and negative may be true, without the least contradiction. For Greenland can pass for no better than a dismal and pitiful country, in regard to the greatest part of it, viz. all the inland country, which is perpetually covered with ice and snow, that never melts, and therefore of no use to mankind ”

“ Though Greenland be a country of a vast extent, yet it affords but a narrow field for any observation or remarks of consequence; there being no strong or well built towns to meet with; no well ordered polity or civil government ”

“ In short, Greenland, as we see, is very convenient for trading, and may be very well worth one’s while to take in hand. But there is little to be done, without an established and formed company of men of substance as well as resolution ”

“ The whole trade of Greenland is, through this Company, an absolute monopoly of the Crown, and a foreigner is not allowed to trade to the value of a skilling with Dane or Esquimaux—a system which all the better enables the benevolent intentions of the Government to be carried out, as spirits and other hurtful articles can be excluded from the country. ”

“ The object of the monopoly is solely for the good of the Greenlanders—to prevent spirits being sold to them, and the vice, disease and misery which usually attend the collision between natives and civilization of the trader’s type being introduced into the primitive arctic community. ”

“ Vikings reached the island in the 10th century from Iceland; Danish colonization began in the 18th century, and Greenland was made an integral part of Denmark in 1953. It joined the European Community (now the EU) with Denmark in 1973, but withdrew in 1985 over a dispute centered on stringent fishing quotas. Greenland was granted self-government in 1979 by the Danish parliament; the law went into effect the following year. Denmark continues to exercise control of Greenland's foreign affairs in consultation with Greenland's Home Rule Government. ”

“ The central administration of the island is in the hands of a governor, appointed by the Monarch and responsible to the Minister for Greenland and the Danish Cabinet. Local affairs are handled by the popularly elected 17-man Greenland National Council. Greenlanders also hold two seats in the Danish Folketing. Aside from the Inuit (People's) Party, a local political movement formed in February 1964, Greenland has no organized party system. The local trade unions provide a base on which a Social Democratic Party could be built.
The Faroe Islands are self-governing within the Kingdom of Denmark. ”

“ It is not supposed that every acre of these twenty millions contains mines, but that all are so connected as to be embraced in the same mineral region. These lands, at an average price of $25 per acre, would be worth $500,000,000. I do not assert that this is their value, but it is a fact that some of the mines already worked on our public domain are worth many thousand dollars per foot, even in the present difficulty of access by roads, and the enormous cost of provisions. ”

“ Such poor countries as Sweden and Denmark, for example, would probably have never sent a single ship to the East Indies, had not the trade been subjected to an exclusive company. The establishment of such a company necessarily encourages adventurers. Their monopoly secures them against all competitors in the home market, and they have the same chance for foreign markets with the traders of other nations. Their monopoly shows them the certainty of a great profit upon a considerable quantity of goods, and the chance of a considerable profit upon a great quantity. ”

“ The monopoly of the colony trade, on the contrary, by excluding the competition of other nations, and thereby raising the rate of profit, both in the new market and in the new employment, draws produce from the old market, and capital from the old employment. To augment our share of the colony trade beyond what it otherwise would be, is the avowed purpose of the monopoly. If our share of that trade were to be no greater with, than it would have been without the monopoly, there could have been no reason for establishing the monopoly. ”

“ There is no form of monopoly which exists or ever has existed on any large scale which was not based more or less directly upon the control of natural resources. There is no form of monopoly that has ever existed or can exist which can do harm if the people understand that the natural resources belong to the people of the Nation, and exercise that understanding, as they have the power to do. ”

“ MONOPOLIES OF MINERAL WEALTH.
It is a well known historical fact that the extraction of metals and minerals from the earth has been more subject to monopoly than almost any other business. It was, and in a large part of the civilized world still is, esteemed a prerogative of the sovereign. Agricultural products have always been gathered from a wide area; manufactures were formerly the product of mean and scattered workshops; but in the working of a rich mine, there was a constant income more princely than was to be obtained from any other single source. ”

“ We see, therefore, that every natural agent is a natural monopoly. Men want land only for the sake of the standing-room, air, water, sunlight, animals, fish, trees, minerals, stone, lumber, firewood, etc., which they get out of it. In regard to every one of these things they are living and working under the conditions of monopoly. When the supply under any monopoly is indefinitely large with respect to the demand, the monopoly has no stringency or pressure and is of no importance; but as the demand rises the pressure of the monopoly advances in a progression to which no limits can be assigned. ”

“ First, the supply of natural agents of which new competitors in any industry may avail themselves has been largely exhausted, or has been gathered up by existing monopolies to render their position more secure; the world has not the natural resources to develop that she had a century ago. Second, the concentration of all the productive industries, except agriculture, into great establishments, while it has enormously lessened the cost of production, has so reduced the number of competing units that a monopoly is the inevitable final result. ”

“ Certain monopolies in this country have gained almost complete control of the raw material, chiefly in the mines, out of which the great body of manufactures are carried on, and they now discriminate, when they will, in the sale of that raw material between those who are rivals of the monopoly and those who submit to the monopoly. We must soon come to the point where we shall say to the men who own these essentials of industry that they have got to part with these essentials by sale to all citizens of the United States with the same readiness and upon the same terms. ”

“ Even in the islands where they have settlements they have very much reduced, it is said, the number of those trees. If the produce even of their own islands was much greater than what suited their market, the natives, they suspect, might find means to convey some part of it to other nations; and the best way, they imagine, to secure their own monopoly, is to take care that no more shall grow than what they themselves carry to market. ”

“ The consequence is that the people receive the benefit from the country's natural resources, while the private owner gets only enough to compensate him reasonably well for the labor he employs and the capital which he invests. Certain other gifts of Nature are, as we have found, very scarce; the number of men who can own and use them and compete with each other in offering their advantages to the public is necessarily small. The inevitable result of this condition is, first, intense competition and then monopoly. ”

“ We have seen that when competition became very wasteful, monopoly arose; indeed, we have noted the working of this law all through our investigation. The principal cause assigned for the formation of the linseed-oil trust was the waste which intense competition had caused. The third law is, then: In any given industry the tendency toward the death of competition (monopoly) varies directly with the waste due to competition. ”

“ If the price continues to rise, competition in some form will appear. Take, for example, the business of transporting goods from New York to San Francisco; if all the railway lines combine to form a monopoly, the competition of ocean steamers via Panama would eventually stop the rise in rates, if no other outside competition stopped it before. The owners of a rich mine have a real monopoly, though they cannot raise the price above a certain point without being undersold by the owners of poorer mines or those more remote from market. ”

“ If we compare this mission and the treatment of Greenland as a whole with the conduct of Europeans under similar circumstances in other parts of the world, we cannot but recognise the working of an unusually humane spirit; and as we examine the whole history of the government of Greenland down to our own day, we find ever new and gratifying examples of this spirit.
With all the good will in the world, however, civilised men cannot resist the tendency to look down upon a primitive people as essentially their inferiors. Even in the history of Greenland we find many proofs of this. ”

“ To-day we are challenging another ownership,—the ownership of materials which go to make the goods we need. Private ownership of land, tools, and raw materials may at one stage of economic development be a method of stimulating production and one which does not greatly interfere with equitable distribution. When, however, the intricacy and length of technical production increased, the ownership of these things becomes a monopoly, which easily makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Today, therefore, we are challenging this ownership ”

“ The individual holding of land as in France, Germany, England, and America, has been opposed by a great many thinkers and popular leaders. The chief objection lodged against it has been that land, being as absolutely necessary to human subsistence as air and water, it should be as free from monopoly as these; for as the accumulations of a single holder go on there is risk of his being able to drive people forth where monopolists like himself do not exist, or, in conjunction with other such monopolists, order people off the face of the earth! ”

“ On the grounds of expediency alone, then, is the private ownership of natural wealth to be considered.
It can hardly be doubted that in the case of our own country, the transfer to private owners of the title to our natural resources has been in the past the wisest and only proper course. It is a fact not often realized that the title to nearly all the natural wealth of the country, almost all the lands and mines and forests, has been held directly by the public within a century, and that the transfer to private owners of a great part of it has taken place within a generation. ”

“ The fact maybe alluded to, that even under widespread competition the holders of the most favorably situated and richest lands, mines, etc., receive a benefit which in absolute equity should be divided among all men. But the vastly more important matter of the monopolies which prevent the public from obtaining the benefit of the natural resources to which it holds an inalienable title, so overshadows such trivial injustices that they may be neglected. ”

“ There should, of course, be restrictions preventing the acquisition of too large quantities by any individual or corporation, but those restrictions should only be imposed after giving due weight to the circumstances that capital can not be secured for the development of the islands unless the investment may be sufficiently great to justify the expenditure of large amounts for expensive machinery and equipments. ”