Shifting Trajectories of Diamond Processing: From India to Europe and Back, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth

Abstract

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.

Brazilian Diamonds: A Historical and Recent Perspective

“…Within the country, the Portuguese crown authorized "exploiters," who oversaw individual miners, to work the deposits in Minas Gerais. In turn, these individuals paid the Portuguese treasury with a tax per miner in their employ (Hofmeester, 2013b). The arrangement worked well.…”

Hirashasan: Governing diamonds in Central India

“…In the year 1750, the duties and profits from the diamond mines amounted to £40,000 per annum (Sinor 1930, p.3).During the colonial rule, the British found diamondbearing pipes in Panna in 1827 (Franklin 1833, p.100), but the negotiations failed to establish a profitable trade in diamonds (Burton, 1879). Colonial reports blamed the labor-intensive production process for the very low production (Rousselet 1875, p.351); others blame the family-based labor regime (Williams 2011, p.19;Hofmeester, 2012, pp.42-43), which made colonial-style administration, surveillance, and control difficult (Hofmeester, 2013).It is said, the last mine exhausted its supply in 1906, and the small-scale industry declined (Chhotalal, 1990;Bhatt, 2002), but it did not obliterate completely, and operated under the shadow of national capital producing mainly for the domestic market largely delinked from global capital. Till World War II it had very minimal interaction with foreign buyers (Thakaran 1973).…”

“…For the history of involvement of Gujarat traders in global diamond trade please see (Hofmeester 2013) and the term Hirashasan includes both the Hira Karyalay and its bureaucracy, and this and other government rules for diamond mining and trade. Nidhi says that the first step to mine for diamonds is to acquire an official permit by paying a small application fee, only Rs 200 (about US$ 3.5), which gives a year's lease that has to be renewed annually.…”

An autopsy of cooperation: diamond dealers and the limits of trustbased exchange

“…Поэтому, даже если такие поставщики, как «ДеБирс», не доверяют нижестоящим закупщикам, объяснение с точки зрения издержек оценки означало бы, что «ДеБирс» по-прежнему сопротивляется интеграции в направлении понижения 28 . Более приемлемое объяснение предлагает транзакционная экономика, согласно которой вертикальная интеграция возникает тогда, когда рыночная организация не может обеспечить безопасность сделок 29 . По-видимому, пока торговля на основе доверия обеспечивала надежность, в отрасли многие годы преобладали дезинтегрированные цепочки, требующие меньших транзакционных издержек 30 , однако теперь расчет транзакционных издержек изменился под влиянием снижения уровня доверия.…”

“…Таким образом, прежние научные объяснения не вполне отвечают практическим наблюдениям. 29 Развитие вертикальной интеграции в ответ на транзакционные риски, такие как разрушение взаимодействия, основанного на доверии, было основным прогнозом транзакционной экономики [42]. Обзор эмпирических исследований о верности прогнозов транзакционной экономики см.…”