The mining of diamonds, their trading mechanisms, their financial
institutions, and, not least, their cultural expressions as luxury
items have engaged the work of historians, economists, social
scientists, and international relations experts. Based on
previously unexamined historical documents found in archives in
Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands, and the United States,
this book is the first in English to tell the story of the
formation of one of the world's main strongholds of diamond
production and trade in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The
history of the diamond-cutting industry, characterized by a
long-standing Jewish presence, is discussed as a social history
embedded in the international political economy of its times; the
genesis of the industry in Palestine is placed on a broad continuum
within the geographic and economic dislocations of Dutch, Belgian,
and German diamond-cutting centers. In providing a micro-historical
and interdisciplinary perspective, the story of the diamond
industry in Mandate Palestine proposes a more nuanced picture of
the uncritical approach to the strict boundaries of ethnic-based
occupational communities. This book unravels the Middle-eastern
pattern of state intervention in the empowerment of private capital
and recasts this craft culture's inseparability from international
politics during a period of war and transformation of empire.
David De Vries is an Associate Professor at the Department of
Labor Studies at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He studied history at
the LSE and Warwick University. A social historian, his primary
research interests are modern labor and business history of
Palestine and Israel. His publications include Idealism and
Bureaucracy in 1920s Palestine: The Origins of 'Red Haifa' (1999,
in Hebrew) and Dock Workers: International Explorations in Labor
History, 1790-1970 (2000, co-edited). Currently he is writing on
strikes in Israeli history and is involved in a project on new
perspectives in the business history of the modern Middle East.
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