188	DIAMOND
	As he pointed out, the diamond-cutting industry has always wandered about, following the peregrinations of world Jewry. Jewish domination of the industry dates back to the Middle Ages, when anti-Semitic guild laws rendered it impossible for Jews to take part in more than a few clearly stipulated trades. It was not so much that other people weren't permitted to cut diamonds as that Jews weren't permitted to do very many other jobs. They concentrated on jewel dealing and jewel cutting and polishing, until they had a large part of the trade and the majority of the cutting industry in their control. Jewel fanciers were apt to discover too late that anti-Semitism had great disadvantages: that when you expelled Jews you expelled their special talents as well. During the Inquisition, Portugal lost a splendid and famous group of cutters, who fled to the Low Countries, France, and England. Thereafter any fidalgo with a rough stone he wanted to have cut and set had to send it all the way to Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris, or Lon­don, and, as Mr. Atkinson sorrowfully pointed out, London lost the trade a little later when her Jews were pushed out to the Continent. During the years preceding the South African dis­coveries, this fact didn't wreak any ostensible hardship on the British public: people had got used to sending jewels for polish­ing, when they had any, to Holland or Belgium. There weren't a lot of diamonds floating around, in any case. The early days of glory in India had stimulated the jewel trade about a hun­dred years before, as witness some of the East India Company's inventories, or the dazzling customs list of Mrs. Warren Has­tings' possessions when she came back to live in England, but this excitement was dying down: India's mines were nearly worked out, and even Brazil's were an old story. After 1871