Saskia Coenen Snyder, "A Brilliant Commodity: Diamonds and Jews in a Modern Setting" (Oxford UP, 2022)

New Books in American Studies · May 25, 2023 · 59m

During the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of diggers, prospectors, merchants, and dealers extracted and shipped over 50 million carats of diamonds from South Africa to London. The primary supplier to the world, South Africa's diamond fields became one of the formative sites of modern capitalist production. At each stage of the diamond's route through the British empire and beyond-from Cape Town to London, from Amsterdam to New York City-carbon gems were primarily mined, processed, appraised, and sold by Jews. In A Brilliant Commodity: Diamonds and Jews in a Modern Setting (Oxford…