תוכן ענינים של הספר ותיאור קצר

David De Vries, Diamonds and War: State, Capital and Labor in British-Ruled Palestine New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010

This book by Prof. David De Vries of Tel Aviv University unfolds the formation in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s of what has become one of the world's main strongholds of diamond production and trade. It discusses the history of the diamond-cutting industry characterized by a long-standing Jewish presence as a social history embedded in the international political economy of its times, and it places the genesis of the industry on a wider continuum of geographic and economic relocation of Dutch, Belgian and German diamond cutting centers. The book situates the Jewish diamond manufacturers and workers, the transplantation of their know-how, and their strategies in the reciprocal relations with both the British-Colonial and Zionist state structures, and through them with the networks and sources of diamond supplies, marketing targets and international competitors. Based on previously unexamined historical documentation found in archives in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands and the USA the book unravels the Middle-eastern pattern of state intervention in the empowerment of private capital. At the same time it recasts the inseparability of a craft culture from international politics in a period of war and transformation of empire.

Contents

Introduction Global and National: War, Diamonds and the Colonial State

Chapter 1. Palestine as an Alternative

Chapter 2. The Making of a Monopoly

Chapter 3. Diamond Work and Zionist Time

Chapter 4. The Challenge and its Constraints

Chapter 5. Labor Unrest

Chapter 6. Liberation and Liberalization

Chapter 7. Crisis and Restructuring

Chapter 8. Reproducing the Pact

Epilogue