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Author De Vries, David, 1954-

Title Diamonds and war : state, capital and labor in British-ruled Palestine / by David De Vries
Published New York : Berghahn Books, 2010

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Description 1 online resource (xv, 351 pages) : illustrations
Contents Diamonds and War; Contents; List of Tables; List of Figures; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction: Global and National: War, Diamonds, and the Colonial State; Chapter 1. Palestine as an Alternative; Chapter 2. The Making of a Monopoly; Chapter 3. Diamond Work and Zionist Time; Chapter 4. The Challenge and Its Constraints; Chapter 5. Labor Unrest; Chapter 6. Liberation and Liberalization; Chapter 7. Crisis and Restructuring; Chapter 8. Reproducing the Pact; Appendices; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index
Summary The mining of diamonds, their trading mechanisms, their financial institutions, and, not least, their cultural expressions as luxury items have engaged the work of historians, economists, social scientists, and international relations experts. Based on previously unexamined historical documents found in archives in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands, and the United States, this book is the first in English to tell the story of the formation of one of the world's main strongholds of diamond production and trade in Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s. The history of the diamond-cutting industry, characterized by a long-standing Jewish presence, is discussed as a social history embedded in the international political economy of its times; the genesis of the industry in Palestine is placed on a broad continuum within the geographic and economic dislocations of Dutch, Belgian, and German diamond-cutting centers. In providing a micro-historical and interdisciplinary perspective, the story of the diamond industry in Mandate Palestine proposes a more nuanced picture of the uncritical approach to the strict boundaries of ethnic-based occupational communities. This book unravels the Middle-eastern pattern of state intervention in the empowerment of private capital and recasts this craft culture's inseparability from international politics during a period of war and transformation of empire
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode
Print version record
Subject Diamond cutting industry -- Palestine -- History -- 20th century
Diamond industry and trade -- Palestine -- History -- 20th century
Middle Eastern history.
ART -- Business Aspects.
HISTORY -- Middle East -- Israel.
Diamond cutting industry
Diamond industry and trade
Middle East -- Palestine
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2009025358
ISBN 9781845458003
1845458001
9781845456337
1845456335
9781789201178
1789201179
9781282627130
1282627139