Summary
The monopolistic diamond-mining cartel (the Diamond Syndicate) whose London sales subsidiary, the Diamond Trading Company, allocated rough diamonds to sightholders, and whose interests intertwined with British colonial policy throughout the formation of Palestine’s diamond industry (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.20, p.39).
Details
- Before World War II rough diamonds from South Africa, the Belgian Congo and Sierra Leone were sent primarily to the DTC in London (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.20).
- The cartel reinforced Antwerp’s hegemony because Belgium and Belgian companies (mainly Forminière) controlled the Belgian Congo mines on which its work depended (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.35-36).
- In 1935 a mining concession gave its subsidiary the Sierra Leone Selection Trust exclusive mining and prospecting rights in Sierra Leone (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.36).
- De Beers’s sales in 1938 were a mere third of the previous year’s under the German threat to the Belgian Congo; on the outbreak of war De Beers and the British government launched a worldwide search for an alternative to Antwerp (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.39).
- Its chairman was Ernst Oppenheimer (Diamonds and War — State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine, PDF p.48).