This work has utilised a variety of qualitative research methods to illustrate different aspects of the diamond industry in Sierra Leone. It includes secondary sources such as published academic books, journal articles and papers; reports and investigations carried out by organisations and activists, NGOs and pressure groups (inside and outside Sierra Leone) as well as newspapers (British and Sierra Leonean) and documentary sources such as official reports (UN, World Bank, IMF, Commission For Africa, DIFID). These secondary sources were used alongside historical and archival primary sources and include Colonial Office (CO), Colonial Secretary's Office (CSO), Ministry of Mineral Resources and Statistics Sierra Leone (1985–2004). Such sources have been combined and cross-referenced as far as possible with other methods in a process of triangulation. Thus, in addition to the above written and documentary sources, ethnographic research methods such as observation, semi-structured and unstructured interviews undertaken during field trips to Freetown and Kono in 2003 have been used. The use of long and informal unstructured interviews and other ethnographic tools such as informal conversations and observation to explore qualitative and more intimate features of social life help enrich and bring into focus more mundane and formalised documentary sources.