Are there any parallels to the Louisiana/Alaska purchases for other countries?

matashowski

Reading a book on the history of Alaska as a Russian colony, and its occurred to me how truly fortunate the US has been, having huge swaths of land sold to them by rival empires for dirt cheap. I get that each case was a unique product of circumstances, but it is still amazing, considering the lives and treasure sacrificed to win territory in other times and places. So it got me wondering, have other countries benefited the same way? I realize there are many examples of large land transfers, but its often at the barrel of a gun.
 

funnyhat

Genoa transferred Corsica to France* to resolve its debts - and because it had lost control of the island.

*(Although the Genoans theoretically kept sovereignty at first. It was complicated.)
 
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Tonifranz

And of course, there's the bequest of Attalus III of his kingdom to Rome, as well as that of Cyrenaica being bequeated by Ptolemy Apion and Bithynia being bequeated by Nicomedes IV to Rome.
 

Agra

I guess Treaty of Nystad though not sure if that truly qualifies even though Sweeden received a payment. There are few others but none quite as big Louisiana or Alaska. Germany purchasing islands from Spain, Flores purchase, Saint Barthélemy.
 

Jared

The Donation of Constantine was a pretty cheap deal for the papacy, seeing as it gave them control over the Western Roman Empire, and all it cost them was someone to forge a document for them.
 

Falk

Banned
Wasn't the Belgian Congo purchased by the king of Belgium and effectively ran as his personal realm.
 

David T

The Treaty of Tordesillas? Admittedly Portugal didn't realize how much of the New World she was conceding to Spain...
 

Deleted member 114175

List of territory purchased by a sovereign nation from another sovereign nation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

In this (admittedly incomplete) list, half the entries are the US.

Beyond the aforementioned examples, Scotland did buy the Isles from Norway, Pakistan bought Gwadar from the Soviets, and Prussia bought Saxe-Lauenburg from Austria, but somehow these don't seem to match the cheap purchases of a third to half of a continent.

Probably some examples from ancient times not thought of as purchases could be included, and fiefs as dynastic dowries from the middle ages might be as well.
 
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David T

SeaCambrian said:
Beyond the aforementioned examples, Scotland did buy the Isles from Norway, Pakistan bought Gwadar from the Soviets, and Prussia bought Saxe-Lauenburg from Austria, but somehow these don't seem to match the cheap purchases of a third to half of a continent.
Click to expand...

Remember that both Alaska and (apart from the New Orleans and to a lesser extent St. Louis areas) Louisiana were very sparsely inhabited. Moreover, the extent to which either would ever be heavily inhabited was doubted, especially with Alaska. (With Louisiana it was clear that the area immediately west of the Mississippi would be settled, but beyond that the Great Plains and Rockies were "the Great American Desert "--fit maybe for Indian tribes who lived by hunting but probably not for large populations of white farmers and townspeople.) There were really no analogous areas of comparable size in Europe. Also, Alaska was unusual because after the Crimean War the Russians decided it was indefensible anyway, while many Americans didn't think it was of too great value in itself but might "cage the British lion on the Pacific coast." https://books.google.com/books?id=d2maug_3uAAC&pg=PA109
 
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