A history of Jewish links in tricontinental diamond trade, following diamonds from African mines to the necklines of high society women, this international history shows why Jews were central to the transatlantic gem trade and its growth into a global industry.

 During the late nineteenth century, tens and 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 African’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 Brilliant commodity Saskia Coenen Snyder, University of Carolina associate professor of modern Jewish history, traces how once-peripheral Jewish populations became the central architects of a new, global exchange of diamonds that connected African sites of supply. European manufacturing centres, American retailers and western consumers. Centuries of restrictions had limited Jews to trade and finance, businesses that often heavily relied on internal networks. Jews were well-positioned to become key players in the early stage of the diamond trade and its growth into a global industry, a development fuelled by technological advancements, a dramatic rise in the demand of luxury goods, and an abundance of rough stones. Relying on merchants and familial ties across continents, Jews created highly successful commodity chain that included buyers, brokers, cutters, factory owners, financiers and retailers.

Working within a diasporic ethnic community that bridged city and countryside, metropole and colony. Jews helped build a flourishing diamond industry, notably Hatton Garden in London and the Diamond District of New York City, and a place for themselves in the modern world.

She maps the diamonds tricontinental journey form the rough stones’ voyage to London, to the polishing factories of Amsterdam, then to jewellery stores in the US. Coenen Snyder’s mining of Dutch literature to provide us with a picture of Jodenbuurt, Amsterdam’s old Jewish neighbourhoods, and its most striking character, Henri Polak. A Dutch Jewish polisher, Henri Polak. Marshalled Jewish and Christian diamond works into a union that won a minimum wage and an eight-hour day. The diamond business was not exclusively Jewish- owned and staffed. But the London Diamond Syndicate, the companies that controlled the distribution of rough diamonds was almost extremely Jewish. The ultimate victor of a diamond rush was non-Jewish, with Cecil Rhodes gaining a near monopoly of the industry with De Beers, many other leading figures like Barney Barnato, Sammy Marks and Alfred Belt were of Jewish background.

The shady Jewish-diamond link was a staple of Victorian fiction, in the works of Anthony Trollope, Wilkie Collins, and Rider haggard. Barnato, a one-time London East End fairground boxer and music hall performer, who had a temerity to build a mansion on Park Lane,. When he fell to his death from a ship returning to England, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that “ there can be no felling of regret”.Coenen Snyder’s classification of Jewish people as South African whites made them players in the British imperial project and beneficiaries of the exploitation of black workers that led to apartheid. She writes that Jewish people had the benefit of European financial connections. That was true of belt, who came from a well-to-do Hamburg family.

A Brilliant Commodity: diamonds and Jews  in a modern setting by Saskia Coenen Snyder, OUP £26.99/$34.95, 320pages.