The lust for resources

The sixteenth century Aztecs wrote of the Spaniards, “They lifted up
the gold as if they were monkeys, with expressions of joy, as if it put
new life into them and lit up their hearts. As if it were certainly
something for which they yearn with great thirst. Their bodies fatten
on it and they hunger violently for it. They crave gold like hungry
swine.”
The Aztecs could have said the same thing for white people and
diamonds, except that the lust had to be prompted a little by a
DeBeers’ marketing campaign. To bolster a sagging diamond economy
in the 1940s the cartel hired a public relations firm that launched
DeBeers’ now-famous slogan, “a diamond is forever,” convincing every
American woman that she must have a diamond ring to get engaged
or married.
The DeBeers cartel was built on their fabrication that diamonds are a
rare commodity. Diamonds appear anywhere in the world that there is
carbon—and that is almost everywhere. They also are easily
manufactured. DeBeers has used its own private armies and other
forms of intimidation to manufacture diamond scarcity by forcing
countries to keep them off the market.
Unlike other precious gems and metals, the price of diamonds is
always going up but the resale value is very low, no matter how much
one pays for them in the first place.
In the third century BC, diamonds were found and used in India for
religious and artistic purposes. In China, because of their hardness,
diamonds were mounted on the tip of an iron tool as an engraving
instrument. Traditionally diamonds were considered by many cultures
to have healing properties.
When diamonds were found in Africa all that changed. 
In 1875, despite the ravages of the slave trade, 90 percent of Africa
was still controlled by African people. 
Ten years later the colonial era was officially consolidated.
In 1884-5,
without a single African present, the heads of European governments
sat in a conference in Berlin for the sole purpose of carving up every
inch of the African continent. The objective of this gathering was to
parcel out all of Africa to Europeans to exploit all possible resources--
human beings, gold, land, animals, rubber, iron, ivory, tourism,
fishing, farming and of course, diamonds. 
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The conference was a move on the part of the European powers to 
attempt to reduce conflict within Europe and inside European countries 
themselves by sharing the vast stolen loot of Africa. Every European
country
wanted a piece of Africa to elevate their standard of living, not
just for the already wealthy, but also for the workers, who for the past
40 years had been in a state of rebellion for a greater share of the
stolen loot of slavery and colonialism. 
Even the Catholic pope, the moral authority of Europe, gave his tacit 
blessing to the Berlin Conference and the plans to colonize all of Africa.
All the imperialists had to do now was defeat the powerful African
resistance and then slaughter, subdue and enslave the Africans who
survived. Multitudes of white people volunteered enthusiastically for
that task.
Imperialist diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes was passionate about
colonialism as a solution for the English masses. 
Rhodes once wrote, “I was in the East End of London yesterday and
attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild
speeches, which were just a cry for ‘bread, bread!’ and on my way
home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever
convinced of the importance of imperialism...My cherished idea is a
solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save the 40 million
inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial
statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to
provide new markets for the goods produced in the factories and
mines. The empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter
question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become
imperialists.”