The gem is always greener...

Emeralds aren't discussed a great deal in most commodity conversations, and from some of the information presented, I can understand why. This is not an item nations waged war over. This item has not come to define societies or nations. It is, to put it another way, no sugar. Yet, there is some insight that can be gleamed from the book itself.

Firstly, this is a commodity that is focused squarely on the middleman. It is not widely mined by those in South America, nor is it widely sought by the (Western) elites or common folk. So it falls to the middlemen, in this case Spanish Jews, to sell the gem abroad. Joseph notes their importance, although in this case, it thrives in part due to the nature of the commodity itself. Like Cocaine, emeralds seem to be an item without a purpose. In fact, most of its trade is illegal, due to the taxation laws. Perhaps because of their inability to find "respectful" jobs, mining emeralds became key to Seraphic Jews. So this is an item that defines a community. Scott points out how slaves were exploited in the process to mine jewels, but considering what we are looking at here, this was the beginning of an underworld enterprise. And without a national patron to watch over the affair, there was even less regulation going into the process. I would counter-argue that workers were always being oppressed, but in this case, it was in part due to an unregulated trade that caused the abuse.

But to continue. This seems to be a "nation" kind of commodity in that it defines a group of people in the same way that the pill or cocaine might. Not that the Spanish ever seemed to pick that up. I may have missed it, but there was nothing that suggested that Spaniards, the Inquisition, and other Christians were picking up on the fact that Jews seemed to handle a lot of Emeralds. Of course, given the Spanish Empire's handling of anything that isn't gold or spices, I can see how they how would miss this. Even when crackdowns on smugglers occurred, the focus seemed to be on tax evasion more than anything else.

I imagine if they knew more about where the gems were going, they would be more interested. Lane makes the point that emeralds were linked to Mughal (and Muslim) power (pg. 151). If the Europeans had even a passing knowledge of how important emeralds were at the court, they might have paid more attention to Jewish traders and smugglers.

Just to wrap up, this book does serve an example of how money itself can be a commodity: a quasi-legal object can be the biggest form of kingsmanship in other parts of the world. This subject was brought up briefly in our talk about the Spanish peso. Going deeper into that topic, it should be noted the Chinese actually favored certain pesos above others, as they took the king on them (Carlos IV) as being Buddha.

http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/chinawh/web/s5/s5_4b.html