Introduction

Indian Diamonds 143
In “The Rajah’s Diamond“, the diamond is described as such a fetish demanding
veneration: “[A] savage would prostrate himself in adoration before so imposing a
fetish” (Stevenson, “Rajah’s” 92). Lizzie, in her room with the boxed diamonds
prays in front of them: “Some short prayer she said, with her knees close to the
iron box [containing the necklace]” (Trollope 440).
Both the labelling and presenting of the diamonds as fetishes and the circumstances
of their theft in England serve to exculpate the thieves. They are victims, if
not of the diamonds, then at any rate of circumstance. It also highlights the crimes
committed before the diamonds reached England. Both Colonel Herncastle and
General Vandeleur actively plot and labour to gain possession of the diamonds.
Although the action of theft establishes parallels between the colonial and the
domestic crimes, the circumstances of these crimes separate them and suggest
discontinuity as the thefts in England are presented as unintentional. While
Melissa Free suggests that this denial includes the thefts in India (352-353), I
would argue that the innocent thieves in England are at first glance in opposition
to the imperial plunderers while they are still, and very visibly living on the spoils
of empire which are disguised as the product of chance and situation. A dividing
line is drawn between the evil exertions of plunderers and the innocent and unintentional
thefts at home. The distinction, however, cannot be drawn sharply as the
parallels between the theft of the Moonstone from the Indian treasury and the
Indian cabinet obviously invite a comparison. Once in England, the diamonds
figure in contexts which are designed to turn them into domestic objects and to
‘fix’ them.
Diamonds as ‘Curiosities’: Collection and Greed
Collecting was a nineteenth-century obsession fuelled largely by natural philosophy
and Darwinism (Whitworth 111). In the context of empire ‘curiosities’ were
brought from all parts of the world and exhibited in Britain. Exploring, collecting
and classifying the Other defined the boundaries between the colonisers and the
colonised in an important imperial practice (Jasanoff 113). The presentation of the
Koh-i-Noor in the Great Exhibition of 1851 provides a telling example of the
effectiveness of exhibiting items in a different frame and, as objects of curiosity, in
a controlled context. As curios, oriental objects have long been part of European
collections, one of the contexts diamonds would figure in in the West. The image
of the collector in literature, grew decidedly more negative towards the end of the
century. Paul Goetsch observes that
[i]n the late-Victorian period, collectors in literature were often seen as selfish
adventurers, unscrupulous scientists or capitalists, criminals, amoral aesthetes
and decadents. Concomitantly, collecting is frequently associated
with exploitation, violence, and crime. (Goetsch 68)