[waqf]

Chrome has almost this, it's called "Duplicate Tab". It does what you'd hope: gets you a new tab which is a copy of the old one including its history.

I agree, it would be better if you could combine that with "Open link in new tab", since that's how I always use it.

[rileywatkins]

Because of this "duplicate tab" functionality, you can click the link to open in the current tab, then middle-mouse click the back button to open the previous page in a new tab (complete with the full history). You end up with your new page and the previous page open in separate tabs with the same history. (Still, not as clean as it could be.)