Please note that the talk will start at 4:45 and not at 4:30, as originally planned.
After the discovery of diamond deposits in South-Africa in 1869, the extraction, trade, manufacturing, and consumption of diamonds intensified spectacularly. The combination of booming supplies, growing bourgeois demand, and technological innovations produced revolutionary changes. Amsterdam became a crucial nodule in the transatlantic network of extraction, production, and trade of rough and polished stones. This talk discusses the effects of the South-African diamond discovery on the Amsterdam Jewish community, half of which depended economically on the diamond by the late 19th century.
