1. “Carats” is the word given to the measure of gemstones and gold. Carats were originally based on the carob seed. The measures fluctuated historically so that one cannot confidently know the precise size of legendary diamonds, unless they can be physically weighed.
2. Harlow, “What Is Diamond?,” 5–22.
3. Tagore, Mani-mālā, 143.
4. King, Natural History, 27.
5. The current value of diamonds is reduced if they phosphoresce, but that glow has added to its symbolic uses.
6. Hazan, Diamond Makers, presents a history of the successful attempt at manufacturing diamonds. For a business account, see Sherman, “Will Lab-Grown Stones,” about Diamond Foundry, a start-up producing diamonds. See also A. T. Collins, “Diamonds,” 255–72.
7. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14505109. Experiment reported in 2011.
8. Gregory, “Body of Work,” 26–33.
10. Kirkley, in “Origin of Diamonds,” offers a brief account of when diamond arrived in the depths of the Earth (48).
11. “The alien planet, a so-called ‘super-Earth,’ is called 55 Cancri e and was discovered in 2004 around a nearby star in our Milky Way galaxy. After estimating the planet’s mass and radius, and studying its host star’s composition, scientists now say the rocky world is composed mainly of carbon (in the form of diamond and graphite), as well as iron, silicon carbide, and potentially silicates. At least a third of the planet’s mass is likely pure diamond” (Clara Moscowitz, “Super-Earth Planet Likely Made of Diamond,” SPACE.com, 11 October 2012, https://www.space.com/18011-super-earth-planet-diamond-world.html).
12. A. T. Collins, “Diamonds in Modern Technology,” 225–26.
13. Hart, Diamond; Roberts, Glitter and Greed. Both books, and others, such as the earlier Kanfer, Last Empire, expose diamond marketing but do not stifle desires for diamonds or books about them.
14. A compact description of diamond as a mineral is found in Lenzen, History of Diamond, 8–11.
15. Epigraph from Geertz, Interpretation of Culture, 5. “Thick Description,” 3–32, particularly what he calls “symbolic action” (10).
16. Koh-i-noor diamond, the most celebrated Indian diamond, has been the subject of many books. See Dalrymple and Annand, Koh-i-Noor; Amini, Koh-i-noor; and Rushby, Chasing.
17. Tagore, Mani-mālā, 1:150. Alluvial diamonds found there and by a company formed in 1867 were inferior in color and size. In the twentieth century, Australia produced distinctive pink diamonds, finding them in soil other than kimberlite
18. Paraphrased information from Swiecki’s online article “Diamond in Brazil.”
19. “Diamond mania” is a term used in an article about South African diamond fields in 1871: “The diamond mania has caused a ferment in our colonies among all sorts and conditions of men” (“South African Diamond Fields,” 118).
20. MacDonald, Language of Empire, 2–3.
22. Cannadine, Orientalism, writes about social structures and social perceptions of empire, including subjective experiences and interconnectedness of its parts, and challenges grand narratives in earlier historical writings.
23. Weber, in Protestant Ethic, elaborates on Adam Smith’s evaluation of success as material wealth and the paradox of being forbidden to exult in that success.
24. See Levine, Forms. See also Angus Brown, “Cultural Studies,” 1187–93. Brown discusses how close reading in Levine’s work connects the formalist practice of reading with sociopolitical concerns as a network.
25. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 1.
26. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 3–4.
27. Simmel, in Philosophy of Money, points this out, and Appadurai quotes Simmel, relevant to diamond: “We call those objects valuable that resist our desire to possess them” (“Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in Social Life of Things, 3). Simmel’s essay might have been written about control of diamond prices: “For many people, the mere fact that the object can only be had for a certain price provides it with value. This frequently results in a circular determination of value: if the seller allows the price to decline, then the valuation of the commodity also declines, and this pushes the price even lower” (“Money and Commodity Culture,” 241).
28. Cannadine, in Ornamentalism, insists that Britain itself be joined to considerations of empire: “There can be no satisfactory history of Britain without empire, and no satisfactory history of empire without Britain” (xx).
29. Proctor, “Anti-Agate,” debunks diamond values, claims diamonds are racialized, the lowest black diamonds and the highest white. Whether they continue to pass as white may be explored in the adoption of bling of mid-twentieth-century to twenty-first-century America.
30. Pietz, “Fetish, I,” 7.
31. Pietz, “Fetish, I,” 7.
32. Diamonds move, quite literally, as in Plotz’s chapter in Portable Property. Rather than Plotz’s attention to portability,...
