Diamonds and War: State, Capital, and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine

Based on previously unexamined historical documents from archives in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands, and the United States, this book presents the first English-language account of how Palestine became one of the world's major centers of diamond production and trade during the 1930s and 1940s. The study examines the diamond-cutting industry as social history within the international political economy of the period. It traces the industry's origins in Palestine within a broader context of economic and geographic shifts affecting Dutch, Belgian, and German diamond-cutting centers. The diamond-cutting trade had a long-standing Jewish presence in the region. Using micro-historical and interdisciplinary approaches, the book challenges simplistic views of ethnically-based occupational communities. It explores how the Palestinian state intervened to support private capital and demonstrates how this craft industry was inseparable from international politics during an era of war and imperial transformation.