Imagine setting out on an expedition to the Valley of the Diamonds in India, where the walls of mountain gorges shine and shimmer with diamonds. Snakes crawl everywhere, and to get the precious stones, you have to throw raw meat on the walls so that the diamonds stick to the flesh. Eagles will sweep in and fly away with the meat in their talons. This is the point where you have to run, and follow the birds to their landing spot. There, they will eat the meat and leave the gems.
This is how diamonds were obtained according to early modern legend.https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/now-at-the-met/2018/indian-diamonds-benjamin-zucker-family-collection(fig. 1 and 2). Obviously this was not really the case. At first, diamonds were traded by merchants using part of the Silk Route. From the 17th century onward, the Dutch-East India Company (VOC) became a player in this Indian trade. The mines, which were often remotely located, were owned by local men of status, like a king or sultan. They could choose whether to exploit the mine, and to whom. Workers were low-paid migrants or slaves, and if these diggers were caught selling diamonds to others, they were buried alive, or beaten (to death).Tijl Vanneste. Chapter nine: The Eurasian Diamond Trade in the Eighteenth Century: A Balanced Model of Complementary Markets p139-153 in Maxine Berg, Maxine, Felicia Gottmann, Hanna Hodacs, Chris Nierstrasz, and Felicia Gottman. Goods from the East, 1600-1800. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137403940
The diamonds in our spherical jewel are a symbol of wealth. The costly gems traveled a great distance from deep inside the earth in India, across land and sea, to the cutting centers in Amsterdam. This jewel likely displayed the financial status of the person wearing it, and 17th century Amsterdam was the right place for flaunting this position, considering the increased economic prosperity caused by the intensive trade brought home by the VOC. But there is another meaning to be found in the use of diamonds; early modern belief held that diamonds could protect against poison, were effective against witchcraft, and could drive away evil spirits.Cassandra Auble, "The Cultural Significance of Precious Stones in Early Modern England" (2011). Dissertations, Theses, & Student Research, Department of History. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/historydiss/39 and Bycroft M., Dupré S. (2019) Introduction: Gems in the Early Modern World. In: Bycroft M., Dupré S. (eds) Gems in the Early Modern World. Europe's Asian Centuries. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96379-2_1
Diamonds aren’t the only gems on this jewel - let’s take a look at another part of the embellishment!
