The Dutch Diamond Trade: Amsterdam's Sparkling Secret

Before Amsterdam became the world's diamond capital, the city had to break Antwerp's stranglehold on the trade. This episode follows the rise of Amsterdam's diamond industry in the 16th and 17th centuries, from the arrival of Jewish diamond cutters fleeing the Inquisition to the invention of the scaif—a rotating metal disc coated with diamond dust that revolutionized cutting. We explore how the VOC and the Wisselbank financed the trade, how Amsterdam's diamond workers organized into guilds and later faced brutal exploitation in the colonies, and how the city's lapidaries created the brilliant-cut diamond that still dazzles today. Along the way, we meet figures like Lodewijk van Bercken, the alleged inventor of diamond polishing, and the Portuguese-Jewish merchant families who made Amsterdam the center of the global diamond trade for centuries.

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