![]() ![]() Bai Bureh, leader of the Temne rebellion against the Hut tax in 1898Īfter Oppenheimer had heard that diamonds were discovered in German South-West Africa (now Namibia) in 1908, he feared this would lead to a significant decrease of the price of diamonds. In 1917, Oppenheimer formed the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa to exploit the east Witwatersrand goldfield. Meanwhile, Ernest Oppenheimer was appointed the local agent for the powerful London diamond syndicate and rose to the position of mayor of Kimberley. During WW1, De Beers managed to purchase the Cullinan Mine and therewith take its only major competitor out of the picture. Soon, production equaled all of the De Beers mines combined, as well as yielding the Cullinan Diamond, the largest diamond ever discovered. Jewish Ernest Oppenheimer moved to Kimberley to buy diamonds from the Cullinan Mine on behalf of the London based diamond brokers Dunkelsbuhlers & Co. That same year, a competitive mine named the Cullinan Mine was discovered, however its owner refused to join the De Beers cartel. Harry Isaacs aka Harry Bernato, co-founder of the Barnato Diamong Mining CompanyĬecil Rhodes died in 1902. A Hut tax, which had such a major impact on the traditional way of life of Black locals that it sparked off two rebellions in 1898 in Sierra Leone, would be enforced after Rhodes’ death and would continue the process of Black relocation and disenfranchisement that Rhodes had set in motion. He introduced various British imperial policies, such as the Glen Grey Act, to push Black people from their lands and make way for the development of the diamond industry. In 1890, Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, which was comprised of what is South Africa and Namibia today. The scarcity of polished diamonds during the 20th century was largely the consequence of this technique. This allowed him to maintain the price of diamonds by curtailing supply in times of low demand, which was already put in practice during the trade slump of 1891–1892. No more than a year later, Rhodes used his monopoly to negotiate a strategic agreement with the London-based Diamond Syndicate, which agreed to regularly purchase a fixed quantity of diamonds at an agreed price. Cecil Rhodes, protégé of the Rothschild dynasty and prime minister of the Cape Colony Back then, this amounted to about 95% of the world’s diamond excavation. The merger of both companies was called De Beers Consolidated Mines and became the sole owner of all diamond mining operations in the entire Cape Colony. ![]() Rhodes managed to purchase Barnato Diamond Mining Company for the then enormous amount of 4 million Pounds Sterling. After changing their names to Harry and Barney Barnato, the bothers soon founded their own diamond company called the Barnato Diamond Mining Company that was focused on buying worked-out diamond mines and mining the abandoned blue ground heaps.īy 1888, the companies of the Bernato brothers and Rhodes had managed to purchase all other diamond mines, leaving only one another as competitors. In 1871, Jewish Harry Isaacs left his slum in Whitechapel, UK to work in the area of Kimberley as a comedian and conjurer and was joined by his brother Barnett two years later. The rise and fall of the Jewish diamond monopolyĭURING THE diamond rush that started in 1867 at Kimberley, Cape Colony, British colonialist and protégé of the Jewish Rothschild dynasty Cecil Rhodes got involved in the diamond business by renting water pumps to miners and buying up claims of small mining operations. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |