Global Trade and Commercial Networks

Introduction: Gems in the Early Modern World

“…11 Two decades later, agents of the Dutch East India Company were making regular purchases of Borneo diamonds from their base at Batavia. 12 Much more important for the global trade in gems, and for the place of Europeans in that trade, was the discovery of diamonds on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. At first, Brazilian diamonds were mined by opportunistic merchants or goldminers.…”

“…24 Hindu and Muslim merchants in India were not merely intermediaries between mine owners and Europeans but were entrepreneurs in their own right; some of them built wide commercial networks that extended into Arab and Persian territories and that made life difficult for European merchants in India. 25 Successful transactions in the diamond trade were complicated cross-cultural events that unfolded over a period of months or even years. An exchange of Mediterranean coral for Indian diamonds, for example, could take two to three years to complete and involve the coordinated activity of Jewish merchants in Livorno, Catholic agents in Lisbon, and Hindu merchant-brokers in Goa.…”

Shifting trajectories of diamond processing: from India to Europe and back, from the fifteenth century to the twentieth

“…When the mines reopened, in 1739, a mining monopoly was established, with the actual mining entrusted to a single contractor, often a Dutch or British company. 85 Representatives of the contractor were the sole merchants allowed to sell the rough diamonds; their sales were restricted to Lisbon, however, where the state controlled the trading procedures and officials of the king always had first choice. After this procedure, representatives could sell any remaining diamonds to other European merchants.…”

“…After this procedure, representatives could sell any remaining diamonds to other European merchants. 86 These measures regulated the official part of the trade, yet illegal flows of diamonds -amounting to at least half the size of the official output -went directly from Brazil to Amsterdam and London. 87 In 1753, the Portuguese crown -in an attempt to stop the ongoing illegal mining and smuggling -established a separate trading monopoly.…”

“…The Dutch consul in Lisbon, Daniël Gildemeester, obtained this extremely expensive trading monopoly in 1761 and held it for several decades. 88 At the same time the Bank of Amsterdam granted several loans to the destitute Portuguese crown. In 1787 Gildemeester lost the contract, after which his successor, Joaquim Pedro Quintela, a Portuguese merchant, approached the Dutch trader and banker John Hope and his company, who suggested that the Portuguese crown deposit diamonds in return for a loan.…”