Diamonds have a long global history in which India plays a pivotal though little-known role. Indeed, it was in India that diamonds were first mined, finished, and worn. Diamonds and their finishing techniques reached Europe in the fifteenth century. Subsequently, part of the industry moved from India to Europe, where manufacturing shifted from one city to another, before returning to India in the twentieth century. These shifts, I argue, are determined by changes in one or more segments of the global commodity chain and they reveal the global interconnections between mining, trading, polishing, and consuming. Furthermore, these shifting centres are themselves a sign of the globalized character of diamond production, exchange, and consumption. Keywords diamonds, global commodity chain, luxury production * This article is part of my research project 'Luxury and labour: a global trajectory of diamond consumption and production', funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. I am grateful to Prof. Dr Jü rgen Osterhammel and Konstanz University for their generous support of this work and to the editors and referees of this journal for their comments and suggestions.

participated as observers. The editors express their thanks to the English language editor, Chris Gordon, and to the cartographer, Annelieke Vries-Baaijens, for their committed and reliable work on the articles presented here.

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This introduction explains why it is important to include the history of labor and labor relations in Africa in Global Labor History. It suggests that the approach of the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations 1500–2000 – with its taxonomy of labor relations – is a feasible method for applying this approach to the historiography on labor history in Africa. The introduction ends with an analysis of four case studies that are presented in this special section, with a specific focus on shifts in labor relations and how they could be explained.

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