[Belgium] Antwerp, The World Diamond Center

We shall probably never know when the first diamonds were discovered, but we do know that, from ancient times until the eighteenth century, all the world’s diamonds came from India. From the time of the Roman Empire until the arrival of the first Europeans in India at the beginning of the sixteenth century, trade relations flourished between Europe and Eastern Asia. One of the two principal diamond trade routes passed through Venice.
The city became the most important mercantile republic in the western world. It enjoyed a monopoly of the diamond trade on its way to the main towns of southern Germany up to its final destination in Bruges. Lying as it did at the far end of the trade route, Bruges gradually developed into a flourishing diamond-cutting center and the city’s reputation in this field steadily increased with time. Although Bruges maintained its pre-eminent position up to the end of the fourteenth century, within fifty years it began to decline because of the silting of the Zwin.

Antwerp was in the sixteenth century an expanding and flourishing city. By this time Antwerp already played a determining role in the development of diamond-working techniques . It is significant, for example, that Francois I did not call on the diamond cutters of Paris but placed his orders instead with the craftsmen of Antwerp. Antwerp was at that time the commercial heart of Europe; approximately 40 % of the world trade passed through its port. Naturally the diamond occupied a favoured place. However the northern Netherlands’s growing proportion on its business was acquired by Amsterdam. Antwerp’s decline did not occur overnight and despite internal struggles such as the conflict between the New Guild of Diamond Cutters and the rich merchants, the city’s prestige remained apparently intact up to the middle of the seventeenth century and the diamond trade itself continued to flourish.

The depression of the 1930s hit the diamond trade hard. The cutting shops were sometimes shut down completely for several weeks at a time. The situation remained difficult until the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1939 many Jewish businessmen fled the country and went to the United States, Portugal or England, where more than 500 diamond dealers from Antwerp, continued to meet and to do business.

In an attempt to save as much of the existing diamond stocks as possible from the Germans, the 500 dealers in England transferred the diamonds there. In agreement with the British government, an organisation known as the Correspondence Office for the Diamond Industry was set up to register the diamonds and keep them for the duration of the war. Thanks to this organisation large quantities of diamonds were returned to their owners after the city was liberated and the Antwerp diamond industry got off to a promising start when the war was ended.