9780813944012_

In 1850, the legendary Koh-i-noor diamond, gem of Eastern potentates, was transferred from the Punjab in India and, in an elaborate ceremony, placed into Queen Victorias outstretched hands. This act inaugurated what author Adrienne Munich recognizes in her engaging new book as the empire of diamonds.

Diamonds were a symbol of political poweronly for the very rich and influential. But, in a development that also reflected the British Empires prosperity, the idea of owning a diamond came to be marketed to the middle class. In all kinds of writings, diamonds began to take on an affordable romance. Considering many of the eras most iconic voicesfrom Dickens and Tennyson to Kipling and Stevensonas well as grand entertainments such as The Moonstone, King Solomons Mines, and the tales of Sherlock Holmes, Munich explores diamonds as fetishes that seem to contain a living spirit exerting powerful effects, and shows how they scintillated the literary and cultural imagination.

Based on close textual attention and rare archival material, and drawing on ideas from material culture, fashion theory, economic criticism, and fetishism, Empire of Diamonds interprets the various meanings of diamonds, revealing a trajectory including Indian celebrity-named diamonds reserved for Asian princes, such as the Great Mogul and the Hope Diamond, their adoption by British royal and aristocratic families, and their discovery in South Africa, the mining of which devastated the area even as it opened the gem up to the middle classes. The story Munich tells eventually finds its way to America, as power and influence cross the Atlantic, bringing diamonds to a wide consumer culture.

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Empire of Diamonds

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