IDB transactions are traceable to the origins of legal diamond buying. The conditions of the mining camps of South Africa during the 1870s were very much like those of the Gold Rush mining camps in California during the 1850s. Both communities attracted rogues, opportunists, and dreamy prospectors. Both communities soon confronted similar difficulties regarding stolen claims, price wars for their finds, and exorbitant prices for wares from non-miner vendors. These conditions led to the evolution of two markets: the legal market and the illegal market. The legal market for diamonds was quickly controlled by a few exclusive mining companies. The IDB market was the realm of individual miners who lacked the influence of the emerging oligopoly/cartels. The oligopoly/cartels of the legal market sought to end the activities of the IDB distributors. To accomplish this goal, representatives of the oligopoly/cartels sometimes engaged in IDB transactions. The other strategy the legal market applied was often more brutal. That strategy involved instigating warfare to seize control of the mines operated by the IDB traders.
The first transnational event that produced "conflict diamonds" occurred in 1895 when John Cecil Rhodes persuaded the Boer leader Paul Kreuger to allow Rhodes and his Debeers diamond mining company to search for diamonds in the Congo region of South Africa. Debeers learned of the Congo mines from dealings with IDB traders who operated unregistered mines there. Kreuger gave Rhodes (who was also then the prime minister of the Cape Town colony) permission to explore the Congo. Rhodes then discovered other plentiful mines that lay within the Boer territory. It was the struggle to seize this land that caused the Boer War. That conflict lasted three years (1898-1901) and cost the British Empire dearly in men and matereal. It was also the war that introduced the concept and use of "concentration camps".
Diamond speculation was also a contributing factor to the "scramble for Africa" which began among various European powers during the late 1800s. Indigenous people fought each other as allies of the competing imperial states, and colonial warfare proliferated. Amid these clashes emerged factions who opposed the imperial occupations. And through all the blood and terror, IDB continued to thrive.
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