US President Donald Trump wants Greenland so desperately that, unknowingly, he is calling into question the very foundation of the United States of America.
Questioning the legal and moral basis of Denmark’s claim to Greenland, Trump said that just “because a boat went there 500 years ago and then left, that doesn’t give you title to property.”
Notably, this is the second time in as many weeks that Trump has questioned Denmark’s claim to Greenland on this basis.
Earlier on January 9, Trump said that while he is a “big fan” of Denmark, “the fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean that they own the land. [I’m] sure we had lots of boats go there also.”
While seemingly innocuous and even rational, Trump’s line of reasoning undercuts not only the very foundations of the US but also those of many other modern states in the Anglosphere, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
For claiming the right to ownership on account of landing a boat before anyone else has been part of a historical principle in international law for at least five centuries.
The principle, also known as gunboat diplomacy, was even validated by the Vatican and was used as a justification for colonialism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Moreover, the principle has been deeply embedded in US jurisprudence and has been used as a precedent to disposses indinegenous people from their land across the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand.
In fact, what Trump has said, the indigenous people in these countries have been questioning for four centuries.
The Doctrine Of Christian Discovery & The Age Of Exploration
The Doctrine of Discovery, or the Doctrine of Christian Discovery, emerged in the 15th century during the age of exploration.
It was rooted in papal bulls or decrees issued by the pope from the Vatican that granted the Christian European powers the right to claim, conquer, and colonize lands discovered by them (by landing a boat) that were empty (terra nullius) or not inhabited by Christians.
The doctrine gave the first European discoverer exclusive rights to such lands against other Europeans.
It was used to justify colonialism in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia, and elsewhere.
Lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples were often deemed terra nullius if they lacked European-style sovereignty or the Christian religion.
In other words, if the indigenous people did not follow Christianity, these lands were deemed empty or terra nullius even if they were inhabited by these people for thousands of years.
Notwithstanding the possession by indigenous people for thousands of years, the papal bulls prioritized the rights of ownership by the Christian European powers who landed there in a boat.
Declaring these lands terra nullius or empty, implicitly also meant that the indigenous people were considered subhuman.
For instance, when British explorer and cartographer James Cook arrived in Australia in 1770, there would have been up to 750,000 people living there, who had been living on those lands for over 65,000 years, however, he declared the land “terra nullius”, which means he declared the Indigenous people of Australia to be not human, and the land empty – and then claimed the land for King George III.
In Aotearoa, Lieutenant William Hobson, on order from the British Crown, declared Te Waipounamu (The South Island) terra nullius in 1840 and then claimed it for the Crown.
Similarly, Latin American countries and India already had flourishing civilizations dating back thousands of years, yet the lands were colonized by European powers.
The Papal Bulls That Justified Colonialism & Conquest
In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the bull ‘Dum Diversas,’ which authorized King Afonso V of Portugal to “subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ”, and “reduce their persons to perpetual servitude”, to take their belongings, including land, “to convert them to you, and your use, and your successors the Kings of Portugal.”
In 1455, Pope Nicholas V issued Romanus Pontifex, which extended Portugal’s authority to conquer the lands of infidels and pagans for “the salvation of all” in order to “pardon … their souls”.
The document also granted Portugal a specific right to conquest in West Africa and to trade with Saracens and infidels in designated areas.
Many historians argue that these bulls were also used to justify the Atlantic slave trade.
In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued the Bulls of Donation, which divided the world into two hemispheres along a north-south line 100 leagues West of the Cape Verde Islands.
The islands and countries to the West of this line were given to Spain for exploration, trade, conquest, domination, and conversion to Christianity, while the countries to the East were given to Portugal.
Throughout the sixteenth century, Spain and Portugal used these papal bulls to claim that papal authority had granted them exclusive rights of discovery, trade, and the conquest of non-Christian lands within their respective spheres of influence.
But as France, England, and Holland grew powerful, they contested this claim, arguing that possession is more important than discovery.
Simply “passing by and discovering with the eye was not taking possession,” the French King argued to justify establishing colonies in Canada.
Entry Into North American Jurisprudence
In 1792, not long after US independence, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson claimed that the Doctrine of Discovery, developed by European states, was international law applicable to the new US government.
In 1823, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in Johnson v. McIntosh. The judgment held that the Doctrine of Discovery had been an established principle of European and English law, in effect in Britain’s North American colonies, and was also the law of the United States.
The Court defined the exclusive property rights that a European country acquired by dint of discovery.
“Discovery gave title to the government, by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.”
Therefore, European and Euro-American “discoverers” had gained real-property rights in the lands of Indigenous peoples by merely planting a flag.
The nation discovering that land had “the sole right of acquiring the soil from the natives, and establishing settlements upon it.”
Indigenous rights were “in no instance, entirely disregarded; but were necessarily, to a considerable extent, impaired.”
The court held that on discovery, the sovereignty of the indigenous peoples and their rights to sell their land were diminished, but their right of occupancy remained.
Indigenous “rights to complete sovereignty, as independent nations, were necessarily diminished,” the US Supreme Court said.
And lastly, this ultimate title of the discovering nation (in this case, Britain) passed to the individual states after the Declaration of Independence.
Johnson is still the law in the United States today and has also influenced the jurisprudence and histories of other settler colonial countries around the world. Johnson has been cited scores of times by courts in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, as well as by the British Privy Council.
Later on, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the Indian Removal Act was passed, under which the Indigenous nations east of the Mississippi were dissolved, and their citizens were forcibly relocated to “Indian Territory,” which itself was later dissolved to become a part of the state of Oklahoma.
The United Nations has rightly described the Doctrine of Discovery as “the driver of all Indigenous dispossession.”
In 2012, at the United Nations, international human rights and Indigenous rights lawyer Moana Jackson said, “While the Doctrine of Discovery was always promoted in the first instance as an authority to claim land of indigenous peoples, there were much broader assumptions implicit in the doctrine.”
“For to open up an indigenous land to the gaze of the colonising “other”, there is also in their view an opening up of everything that was in and of the land being claimed. It was in that sense.. a piece of genocidal legal magic that could, with the waving of a flag or the reciting of a proclamation, assert that the land allegedly being discovered henceforth belonged to someone else, and that the people of that land were necessarily subordinate to the colonisers.”
In 2023, nearly 500 years after papal decrees were used to rationalize Europe’s colonial conquests, the Vatican also repudiated those decrees, saying the “Doctrine of Discovery” that was used to justify snuffing out Indigenous people’s culture and livelihoods is not part of the Catholic faith.
The ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ must be repudiated; however, the question is whether Trump can selectively reject this doctrine, only to question Denmark’s control over Greenland, while still justifying the manifest destiny of American colonizers to control all lands of North America?
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 20, 2026
In fact, ironically enough, even as Trump questions the basis of the Doctrine of Discovery in the context of Denmark’s claim over Greenland, he himself posted an edited image today on his social media platform Truth Social showing himself, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio planting a US flag on the island of Greenland, with a signboard reading – ‘Greenland – US territory, EST 2026’.
The image is a throwback to the high days of gunboat diplomacy, where just by planting a flag and raising a signboard on a new territory, Christian European countries used to claim that territory for themselves, overriding the rights of the people living on that territory for thousands of years.
The Vikings from the Nordic countries first reached Greenland in 982 AD, more than a thousand years ago.
However, they not only discovered Greenland, but also settled it and colonized it. Unlike the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Greenland was also a virgin territory that was truly ‘terra nullius’.
No indigenous people were dispossessed while settling Greenland.
However, despite a history of over 1,000 years, the image posted by Trump suggests he has overridden the rights of the people already inhabiting this island by simply raising the US flag, albeit not on the actual land but on social media.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
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- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
