Blood, Sweat and Earth: The Struggle for Control Over the World's Diamonds Throughout History - Hardcover

by Tijl Vanneste (Author)

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 expos 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.

Author Biography

Tijl Vanneste is a researcher in the Portuguese Institute of International Relations at the Universidade Nova in Lisbon. He is the author of Global Trade and Commercial Networks: Eighteenth-Century Diamond Merchants.