For decades, men in many countries are expected to spend two or even three months on diamond engagement rings. This concept and the iconic status of this gem did not come into being unexpectedly.

The story goes back to 1870 when Oxford dropout Cecil Rhodes set out to try his luck in the Cape Town Colonial (Modern South Africa), a key area in Britain at the time.

Seeing the booming diamond mining department there, he began renting water pumps from diamond prospectors to prevent mine flooding. Then, over the next 20 years, Rhodes and his partner Charles Rudd continued to acquire hundreds, followed by thousands of small mines and “claims” (land believed to have hidden diamonds) – often because their owners faced bankruptcy. Most miners are small operators, and Rhodes and Rudd can obtain serious financial capital through their connections in London (especially the Rothschild Bank Empire). As the two partners will claim to merge into larger mining units, overhead costs are reduced and operations are becoming more profitable.

The partner merged into De Beers merged mines, the name of one of the mines they took over. By 1888, the company had already occupied a monopoly in South Africa’s claims and active diamond mines. In 1900, as diamonds accounted for more than 25% of South Africa’s exports, De Beers became a powerful country in the country’s economy, controlling 90% of the total global diamond supply. Rhodes himself became an imperial figure, serving as prime minister of the Cape colony from 1890 to 1896.

De Beers was built on South Africa’s racist policy, which was then ruled by white minorities. Diamonds are earned by black miners in survival wages, while white, European-European shareholders enjoy the profits.

After Rhodes died in 1902, control of De Beers was eventually passed to German-born entrepreneur Ernest Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer combines a combination of economic incentives, strategic pressures and diplomacy to convince diamond suppliers in other countries to sell exclusively through the “Central Sales Organization” (CSO) owned by London and De Beers, which became a unified sales channel for nearly all pre-cut diamonds in the world in the 1930s. This allows de Beers to store diamonds, strictly control the release of stones in the global market, and effectively control prices, thus creating the fantasy of diamond scarcity on a global scale.

Meanwhile, Debils is trying to increase global demand for diamonds. In 1946, the company hired NW Ayer, an advertising company based in Philadelphia, and a year later put forward the legendary slogan, “Diamonds are Forever.” This reshapes diamonds, especially diamond engagement rings as symbols of “eternal love.” Through mass advertising, product displays in movies, and celebrity PRs (for example, lending jewels to actors for major events), the event transformed the diamond market in the United States, Europe and Japan.

It lasted for 64 years until 2011, and the sport was an amazing global success, with Advertising Times magazine bringing “Diamonds forever” as the top advertising slogan of the 20th century. De Beers created a social norm where diamond engagement rings are almost mandatory in every developed market. While previously, the fiancé might have given his intention a small box of drops, a string of pearls or heirlooms, the number of American brides with diamond rings climbed from 10% in 1940 to about 80% in 1980. In Japan, this figure rose from less than 5% in 1960 to 60% in 1981.

By the early 1950s, diamond rings were usually priced at about $170 – and today’s money was about $2,300. The ads of de Beers initially suggested spending a month’s salary on engagement rings, but by the 1980s they asked the question: “How do you earn a two-month salary forever?” Consumers don’t seem to feel that the resale value of diamonds usually only accounts for 50% of their original retail price (in comparison to gold, the “official” benchmark price twice a day).

By 1953, when Marilyn Monroe sang “Diamonds is Girls’ Best Friends” and the James Bond movie Diamonds is Forever was released in 1971, Diamonds had become an idol.

“Cartel Behavior”

By the late 1970s, De Beers had distributed about 50 million diamond carats each year, with sales exceeding $20 billion in the United States alone.

But with the 1980s flowing, the company began to have problems.

As the anti-apartheid movement gained momentum in Europe and the United States, Derbils was under increasing scrutiny. Reports on their working conditions are astonishing: low wages for miners, minimal safety training and crowded dormitory housing surrounded by barbed wire and security checkpoints. This negative propaganda made De Beers one of the main beneficiaries of apartheid.

De Beers has fought against the U.S. Department of Justice allegations of “cartel behavior.” But in 1994, the company was indicted by a U.S. grand jury for a fixed price charge. The company was banned from doing business in the United States, where its executives were unable to take steps anymore due to fear of arrest.

In the late 1990s, diamond trade was reportedly financed by Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, further exacerbating consumer sentiment.

Rebel groups target “alluvial” diamond mines in “alluvial” diamond mines (usually in riverbeds) – selling stones into informal “gray” markets and using profits to buy weapons. The term “Blood Diamond” entered the dictionary, and the investigative articles at the time portrayed enslaved children with pickiness and shovels on it. De Beers is accused of turning a blind eye, if not totally accomplice. The company’s sales fell more than 20% in two years, from about $5.7 billion in 1999 to $4.45 billion in 2001, with other diamond suppliers such as Endiona in Angola and Alrosa in Russia being affected.

But De Beers has changed since the early 1990s. Faced with pressure from South Africa’s newly elected African National Congress (ANC), it introduced better terms and wages for its primarily black miners. At the same time, black South Africans have also begun to play some management roles.

Meanwhile, the U.S. indictment means the company has no choice but to terminate its CSO in 2000, sparking competition from other manufacturers. Diamond prices are no longer set and determined by CSOs and become more volatile, which may lead to demand fluctuations, economic cycles and geopolitical conditions.

To cope with the rebound of blood diamonds, de Beers helped implement the Kimberley Process in 2003, through which diamond dealers can track the origins of diamonds and authenticate the “clean” diamonds with micro stamps.

Not forever?

Today, natural diamonds may have lost some of their charm because of the rise of “lab-grown” stones and “diamond simulators” such as cubic zircons, which are 90% cheaper than mining varieties and are usually only available to use experts to distinguish them from real things.

Over the past two years, the diamond industry has suffered a “perfect storm” of cheap synthetic stones, weak consumer demand in the United States and China, sanctions on Russia and more recently high U.S. tariffs. This has had a widespread adverse impact: the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) reported that rough diamond imports dropped 35 percent in 2024, with overall tr​​ade declining by 25 percent year-on-year (from $32.5bn to $24.4bn) – and in the Indian gem processing hub of Surat, at least 50,000 diamond workers were rendered jobless in 2024. At least 80 diamond workers in India have Died from suicide In the past two years.

In 2011, the Oppenheimer family sold its interest in De Beers to London-based mining company Anglo American, another major shareholder, for more than $5 billion. De Beers is now on sale again, again for $5 billion as Anglo Americans try to exit the falling diamond market in favor of copper, iron ore and rare earth minerals.

Despite poor market conditions, the average price of diamond rings in the United States is about $100 billion in global consumer diamond sales in 2024, with a standard salary of about 1.3 months in the United States, but the global median value is about 1.3 months. For those with a bigger means, the Harolds in London reportedly owned 228.31 carats, pear-shaped diamonds that can be viewed by private appointments – an estimated price of over $30 million.

This article is part of “Ordinary Projects, Extraordinary Stories”, a series that introduces the amazing stories behind well-known items.

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