Introduction

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Sabina Fazli
ready depicted crime in the domestic sphere, it is now colonial spectres that appear
in the metropolis. In reading the diamonds as Indian, their intrusion can be
analysed through the categories Brantlinger defines.
Diamonds in India and Britain
Diamonds in Nineteenth-Century Britain
The history of diamond trade to Europe can be divided into three phases according
to their places of import. From ancient times until the 1730s, diamonds were
imported from India, from then on until the 1860s they mainly came from Brazilian
mines, and the third phase sees the dominance of southern Africa in the international
diamond trade (Gaggio 76-77).
India is the oldest export region for diamonds, but little is known about its
first mines. Pliny the Elder in the first century and Ptolemy in the secondcentury
CE both mention Benares as the place from which diamonds are brought to
Europe. In the thirteenth century, Marco Polo reports new mines in Golconda. In
the fifteenth century, the Portuguese from their base in Goa, began to dominate
the diamond trade with Europe – which also became more organised - and they
were followed by the British and the Dutch based in Madras (Gaggio 76). The
output of the Indian mines was limited, and only a small percentage of stones
reached Europe, as the local rulers often claimed the largest stones for themselves
and only allowed minor diamonds to be exported. India was succeeded by Brazil
as the main source of diamonds in the 1730s, when the Indian mines showed the
first signs of exhaustion, until, in 1866, diamonds were discovered in southern
Africa (Levinson 73-75).
With the turn to Brazil for the import of stones and the increasing output of
the South American mines, a growing middle-class in Great Britain was able to
afford diamonds. The quite uncontrolled output of the Brazilian mines led to a
crash in prices, and traders contrived to ship their diamonds to India whence they
could be sold as more expensive and rare Indian stones (Proctor 388). This practice
is also mentioned by King who asserts that Brazilian diamonds sold as Indian
had more of “a character” in European eyes (34). Even when hardly any diamonds
were imported from India, Indian diamonds were still thought to be more
desirable than Brazilian ones and retained a special allure. The availability of diamonds
was further facilitated by the discovery of deposits in Africa, whose mines
topped the output of the Brazilian ones. In England, the luxury of a diamond
purchase was consequently democratised (Levinson 78-79; Proctor 390).
An interest in the history of diamonds was also emerging, and diamonds as the
focus of ancient legends and history naturally aroused interest. The rise of different
historical sciences additionally fed the interest in objects and their histories
(Goetsch 68). Kurt Tetzeli von Rosador observes that “from the middle of the