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Koh-i-Noor: Empire, Diamonds, and the Performance of British Material Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Abstract

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Research Article
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2009

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References

1 Balfour, Ian, Famous Diamonds (London, 2000), 172Google Scholar.

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9 See India Office Records (IOR), 1600–1947, IOR/L/PS/11/296/5115, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (APAC), British Library (BL). This file was produced by the East India Company as a result of its own inquest into how the Koh-i-Noor was appropriated by the crown in the late 1850s. It contains copies of earlier memorandums sent out to the company's Court of Directors by the governor-general, correspondence he had with underlings, as well as the research about the stone that was conducted on his behalf.

10 For the Deccan booty settlement of 1828, see IOR, IOR/L/AG/17/2/4, APAC, BL.

11 “Document 2: Governor General's Despatch to Secret Committee, No. 20 of 7th April, 1849,” in The History of the Koh-i-Noor, Darya-i-Noor and Taimur's Ruby, comp. Bhai Nahar Singh and Kirpala Singha (New Delhi, 1985), 4–25.

12 Inquiry into the confiscation of the Koh-i-Noor, 26 August 1854, IOR, IOR/L/PS/11/296/5115, APAC, BL.

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18 “Document 1: Private Letters, Camp Ferozepore, 30 March 1849,” in ibid., 3.

19 “Document 8: Chapter VI: Lady Login's Recollections (1820–1904), Court Life and Camp Life,” in ibid., 31.

20 “Document 6: The Life of the Marquis of Dalhousie, [by] Lee-Warner, Vol. I,” in ibid., 158.

21 “Document 2,” in ibid., 25.

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25 Lord Dalhousie, governor-general of India, to Queen Victoria, Simla, 15 May 1850, in The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3 vols., ed. A. C. Benson et al. (London, 1907), 2:286–87.

26 When many other gemstones from the Lahore treasury were shown to the queen by members of the East India Company in 1851, she recorded in her diary how impressed she was with Taimur's Ruby: “[It] is the largest in the world, therefore even more remarkable than the Koh-i-noor! I am very happy that the British Crown will possess these jewels, for I shall certainly make them Crown Jewels” (Queen Victoria, quoted in Charles R. Fay, Palace of Industry, 1851: A Study of the Great Exhibition and Its Fruits [Cambridge, 1951], 71).

27 A. M. B., , The Story of Garrards: Goldsmiths and Jewellers to Six Sovereigns in Three Centuries, 1721–1911 (London, 1912), 9499Google Scholar; George Fox, “An Account of the Firm of Rundell, Bridge and Company, the Crown Jewellers and Goldsmiths on Ludgate Hill” (unpublished manuscript), 1843–46, pressmark 276.E.3, General Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum Archives, National Art Library, 8.

28 “East India House,” The Times, 28 September 1854, 5.

29 Nevil Story-Maskelyne, “On the Koh-i-Noor Diamond” (unpublished manuscript), DF5001/415, Story-Maskelyne Papers, Natural History Museum Archives (NHMA), 15.

30 “Document 44: Theophilus Metcalfe, Lt. Governor of NW Provs, Delhi, to Sir Henry Elliot, Secretary to the Government of India, 7th January 1850,” in History of the Koh-i-Noor, 80–81.

31 ibid., 81–82.

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39 “The Koh-i-Noor,” Illustrated London News, 23 December 1848, 397; “The Koh-i-Noor Diamond,” Illustrated London News, 26 May 1849, 332. For The Times's coverage, see “India and China,” 4 May 1850; “Her Majesty's Steam Sloop,” 1 July 1850, 4; “Grand Banquet to Lieutenant-General Sir William Gomm, K.C.B.,” 12 August 1850, 5; “The Opening of the Great Exhibition,” 2 May 1851, 5; “The Great Exhibition,” 3 May 1851, 5; “The Cutting of the Koh-i-Noor,” 19 July 1852, 8; “The Great Indian Diamond,” 27 July 1852, 7; and “The Re-cutting of the Koh-i-Noor,” 28 August 1852, 5. See also “The Koh-i-Noor, a Real ‘Mountain of Light!’” Punch, 19 April 1851, 165; and Wilkie Collins, preface to The Moonstone (1868; London, 2001), xxiii.

40 “Document 6,” in History of the Koh-i-Noor, 28.

41 “The Koh-i-Noor,” Illustrated London News, 23 December 1848, 397. The Illustrated London News was particularly involved in covering the Anglo-Sikh war and published one of the first pictures of the Koh-i-Noor available to metropolitan audiences; for this picture, an engraving, see “The Koh-i-Noor Diamond,” 26 May 1849, 332. See also the Illustrated London News, “The War in the Punjab,” 27 January 1849, 52, 56–57; “India—Capture of Moultan,” and “The War in India,” 24 February 1849, 117–18; “The War in the Punjaub,” 10 March 1849, 145–46; “The War in India,” 7 April 1849, 161–66, 230; and “The Victories in the Punjaub,” 28 April 1849, 265–66.

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48 “Document 8,” in History of the Koh-i-Noor, 30–38.

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58 “Her Majesty's Intention,” 5.

59 “Her Majesty—as She Appeared on the First of May, Surrounded by ‘Horrible Conspirators and Assassins,’” 193.

60 “The Building and the Ceremony,” Daily News, 2 May 1851, 5.

61 “The Great Exhibition,” Spectator, 10 May 1851, 446. For more on the cage, see “The Great Exhibition,” Observer, 5 May 1851, 2; “The Great Exhibition,” Daily News, 5; and “The Great Exhibition,” John Bull, 10 May 1851, 298.

62 French, Great Exhibition, 229.

63 Tallis, Tallis's History of the Crystal Palace, 2:150.

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66 “The Front Row of the Shilling Gallery,” 10.

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68 “The Front Row of the Shilling Gallery,” 10.

69 Mackie, Market à la Mode, 111, and see 104–43.

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71 “Ballad for Old-Fashioned Farmers: On the Great Exhibition,” Punch, 17 May 1851, 212.

72 “The Great Exhibition,” Daily News, 5.

73 “A Gentleman from the Country Mistakes the Crystal sent by the Duke of Devonshire for the Koh-i-Noor Diamond,” Punch, 17 May 1851, 200.

74 “The Black Diamond—The Real Mountain of Light!!” Punch, 14 June 1851, 252; Tallis, Tallis's History of the Crystal Palace, 2:158, 240.

75 “The Front Row of the Shilling Gallery,” 10.

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77 For a discussion of the centrality of women, women's bodies, and womanhood in debates about the “traditional” versus the “modern” in colonial India, see Lata Mani, Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (Berkeley, 1998).

78 “The Front Row of the Shilling Gallery,” 11.

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89 See Balfour, Famous Diamonds, 228–30, 124–35; and Ronald, Susan, The Sancy Blood Diamond (Hoboken, NJ, 2005), 206–18Google Scholar. Interestingly, the Orlov Diamond was not recut in this way.

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92 “Historical notes on the Koh-i-Noor Diamond,” DF 5001/1–11, Story-Maskelyne Papers, NHMA.

93 Pointon, “Women and Their Jewels,” 24.

94 “The Cutting of the Koh-i-Noor,” 8.

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100 “The Poor Old Koh-i-Noor Again!” 54.

101 Charles W. King, quoted in “Precious Stones and Antique Gems,” 6.

102 “To Asscler, 4 December 1909,” DF10/50, Pk1, Story-Maskelyne Papers, NHMA.

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