Content area
Full Text
[Figure omitted: See PDF.]
The history of South Africa’s 1870s diamond rush, and the economic and power struggles that rose in the 1880s, have been documented in dozens of books. In more recent times, the narrative has shifted from derring-do and empirebuilding to colonialism and exploitation. The author of A Brilliant Commodity, Saskia Coenen Snyder, who is associate professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of South Carolina, USA, recounts the former while acknowledging the latter in the story of the roles played in those events by Jews from Europe. Dr Coenen Snyder has meticulously combed through official documents, family records and contemporary press reports to create an objective and thoroughly researched account of their activities during this pivotal time that created the modern jewellery industry.
The discovery of diamonds in what had been a neglected corner of the British Empire quickly transformed South Africa into, if not the jewel in the crown, at least a major side stone worthy of a bloody war. When the news of diamonds being discovered in Kimberley broke in 1869, Jews joined the teeming thousands of fortune seekers aiming to start a new, hopefully more prosperous, life at the diamond diggings. Many trekked there to dig for their fortunes, but joining them were members of merchant families who set up shipping, transport and financing services. These businesses not only supported the diamond miners but also established the channels that aided the growth and expansion of the British Empire, by connecting African sources to European finance and manufacturing entities, and finally to consumer markets in the U.S. and Europe.
As in Europe, however, Jews were not fully accepted by the empire they were helping to build. They were ‘White, but not quite.’ They weren’t colonisers, but they also weren’t the colonised. A fitting...