At the heart of this study on cross-cultural trade lies a concrete case-study of a network of diamond merchants operating in the early eighteenth century. All the traders examined in this study are outsiders: an English Catholic in Antwerp, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews in London and Amsterdam and French Huguenots in Lisbon.

At the heart of this study on cross-cultural trade lies a concrete case-study of a network of diamond merchants operating in the early eighteenth century. All the traders examined in this study are outsiders: an English Catholic in Antwerp, Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews in London and Amsterdam and French Huguenots in Lisbon.

Blood, Sweat and Earth is a hard-hitting historical expose of the diamond industry, focusing on the exploitation of workers and the environment, and the monopolization of uncut diamonds, and how little this has changed over time. It describes the use of forced labour and political oppression by Indian sultans, the Portuguese in Brazil, and South African industrialists, 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.

Scholars have long debated the use of law to settle international trade disputes in the early modern period. In this book, Tijl Vanneste uses the case study of commercial litigation before the Dutch consular court of Izmir to argue that merchants relied on a particular blend of mercantile customs, which he calls 'the merchants' style', and specific legal forms and procedures, laid down in written regulations, and dependent on local and international circumstances. The book challenges the idea of a universal 'law merchant', to replace it with a more nuanced analysis that centralizes the interplay between informal merchant custom, as advocated by traders and judges alike, and formal procedural legislation, drawn mostly from Roman law, in the resolution of mercantile disputes.