The Diamond Ring: Business, Politics and Precious Stones in South Africa, 1867-1947

This book is a history of the production and marketing of diamonds from the period of the rush to Kimberly and the rise of de Beers until the formation of the Central Selling Organization by South African producers and London and South African merchants. The book departs from previous histories by emphasizing the key role of the merchants in financing and organizing the trade in opposition to the South African state, during the struggle to control production in the 1920s and 1930s. It explains the reasons for state interest in diamond production and the eventual co-operation of politicians, officials and diamond magnates in regulating supply and sales. New material is provided on the ways in which the British government strengthened the hand of the Diamond Syndicate and the Diamond corporation to maintain and extend central selling beyond South Africa to other states - Zaire, Angola, Ghana and Sierra Leone, before independence, as the Ring expanded into a world-wide brokerage based on London.