Karin Hofmeester

Shifting Trajectories of Diamond Processing: From India to Europe and Back, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth

Diamonds have a long global history in which India plays a pivotal though little-known role. Indeed, it was in India that diamonds were first mined, finished, and worn. Diamonds and their finishing techniques reached Europe in the fifteenth century. Subsequently, part of the industry moved from India to Europe, where manufacturing shifted from one city to another, before returning to India in the twentieth century. These shifts, I argue, are determined by changes in one or more segments of the global commodity chain and they reveal the global interconnections between mining, trading, polishing, and consuming. Furthermore, these shifting centres are themselves a sign of the globalized character of diamond production, exchange, and consumption.

Working on Labor

Using comparative and long-term perspectives the seventeen essays in this collection discuss the development of labor relations and labor migrations in Europe, Asia and the US from the thirteenth century to the present.

Family, Demography and Labour Relations

Over the past decades, demographic, economic and labour historians have given ample attention to the relationships between demographic patterns, family systems and structural economic change. In this literature, family relations are usually analysed as being at the receiving end of economic developments. For instance, early historians of proto-industrialization theorized that the increasing need for family labour in the seventeenthand eighteenth-century home industries stimulated men and women to marry earlier, in order to reproduce labour power for the home industry (Kriedte, Medick, & Schlumbohm, 1981; Mendels, 1972). Even if many empirical studies have refuted this prediction (Saito, 2013), the debate remained centred around the question of what the demographic effects were of these economic developments (Ogilvie & Cerman, 1996, p. 228). In subsequent periods, the process of industrialization, and its accompanying developments such as the rise of (male) wage labour and the decline of the family firm (farm), led to different patterns of cohabitation, most notably the decline of multigenerational families (see e.g. Ruggles, 2015). What is less explored is the impact of changes in family systems and demography on changing labour relations and gendered work patterns. Although recently a debate about such a causality has arisen with regard to the impact of the European marriage pattern on wage labour relations, gender, and long-run economic growth (Carmichael, de Pleijt, van Zanden, & De Moor, 2016; Dennison & Ogilvie, 2014, 2016; de Moor & van Zanden, 2010), this debate has predominantly focused on the pre-industrial period, and on Europe. Therefore, in order to explore the effects of family formation and demographic change on labour relations in a global framework, connecting pre-industrial and industrial societies, a workshop was organized at the International Institute of Social History (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) in December 2014. The workshop aimed to connect ongoing research in the fields of demography, family history and women’s work to the national distributions of self-employed, wage earners, household kin producers, etc. that have been charted worldwide in the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations. The Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations is a long-standing effort uniting labour historians across the globe in an attempt to trace and explain historical shifts in

Working for Diamonds from the 16th to the 20th Century

Since a lot of work is involved along the route from mine to finger, and since this commodity chain has an age-old global character, diamond production offers us a perfect exemplar for how to do global labor history. The aim of this chapter is to show the global interconnectedness of diamond production, trade and consumption and its effects on labor relations world wide. The focus is on India and Europe, although other parts of the world are also touched upon. Next to migration, ethnicity, religion and caste played a role in labor relations in the global diamond production. Whether the mine owner was a Deccan sultan, Mughal Emperor, the EIC or the Portuguese Crown, they more or less all followed the same exploitation methods, striving for a monopoly on the mines and the control of supply. Keywords:diamond production; Europe; India