Blood, Sweat and Earth: The Struggle for Control over the World’s Diamonds Throughout History

Description

A sweeping history of our enduring passion for diamonds—and the exploitative industry that fuels it.   Blood, Sweat and Earth is a hard-hitting historical exposé of the diamond industry, focusing on the exploitation of workers and the environment, the monopolization of uncut diamonds, and how little this has changed over time. It describes the use of forced labor and political oppression by Indian sultans, Portuguese colonizers in Brazil, and Western industrialists in many parts of Africa—as well as the hoarding of diamonds to maintain high prices, from the English East India Company to De Beers. While recent discoveries of diamond deposits in Siberia, Canada, and Australia have brought an end to monopolization, the book shows that advances in the production of synthetic diamonds have not yet been able to eradicate the exploitation caused by the world’s unquenchable thirst for sparkle. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Contents Introduction 1. Asian Diamonds: The Discovery of a Luxury Commodity, 50 ce–1785 2. Slavery and Monopolies: Diamonds in Colonial Brazil, 1720–1821 3. The Rollercoaster towards Industrial Modernity, 1785–1884 4. Building a Worldwide Empire: The Century of De Beers, 1884–1990 5. The Enduring Attraction of Alluvial Mining, 1884–2018 6. Mining in the Western World: The Twenty-first-century Collapse of the World De Beers Created Epilogue: About Human Rights and Environmental Considerations References Select Bibliography Acknowledgements Photo Acknowledgements Index