[5] The company was founded in 1888 by British businessman Cecil Rhodes, who was financed by the South African diamond magnate Alfred Beit and the London-based N M Rothschild & Sons bank.

After they discovered diamonds on their land, the increasing demands of the British government forced them to sell their farm on 31 July 1871 to merchant Alfred Johnson Ebden (1820–1908) for £6,600.

[25] Rhodes was concerned about the break-up of the new monopoly, stating to shareholders in 1896 that the company's "only risk is the sudden discovery of new mines, which human nature will work recklessly to the detriment of us all".

[30] Instead, the mine started selling to a pair of independent dealers named Bernard and Ernest Oppenheimer, thereby weakening the De Beers stronghold.

[31] Francis Oats, who became Chairman of De Beers in 1908, was dismissive of the threats from the Premier Mine and the finds in German South West Africa.

Ernest Oppenheimer was appointed the local agent for the powerful London Syndicate, rising to the position of mayor of Kimberley within 10 years.

He understood the core principle that underpinned De Beers's success, stating in 1910 that "common sense tells us that the only way to increase the value of diamonds is to make them scarce, that is to reduce production".

[31][34][9] Oppenheimer was very concerned about the discovery of diamonds in 1908 in German South West Africa, fearing that the increased supply would swamp the market and force prices down.

[36] The Free State Gold Rush was made possible in part due to this innovation, as the fields required deep drilling to reach gold-bearing reefs.

[38] Under Harry, the company expanded to several different countries around the globe, including Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Portugal, Zambia, and Tanzania.

[41] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, De Beers attempted to secretly enter the United States' diamond market, being forced to divest its American assets in 1975 to avoid the risk of violating anti-trust laws.

When that did not work, it flooded the market with diamonds similar to those of producers who refused to join in, depressing their price and undermining return for the resistant.

[45] Finally, it bought diamonds when prices fell considerably naturally, to constrict supply and drive their value back up, such as during the Great Depression.

[56] De Beers ran television advertisements featuring silhouettes of people wearing diamonds, set to the music of 'Palladio' by Karl Jenkins.

The new brand began selling in September 2018 and the stones are produced in Gresham, Oregon, a $94 million facility using the region's cheap electricity, which opened in 2018 with the capacity for 500,000 rough carats of diamonds per year.

In February 2020, De Beers reported its worst set of earnings since the company was bought by miner Anglo American in 2012.

[76] It is involved in many parts of the diamond value chain, from mining to sales, and is made up of a series of joint ventures and wholly owned operations.

[citation needed] In 1999, a campaign by Global Witness to highlight the role of diamonds in international conflicts led to a review by the United Nations.

The initial focus of the UN's investigation was on Jonas Savimbi's UNITA movement in Angola, which was found to have bartered uncut diamonds for weaponry despite international economic and diplomatic sanctions being in effect through United Nations Security Council Resolution 1173.

[87][88][89] In December 2000, following the recommendations of the Fowler Report, the UN adopted the landmark General Assembly Resolution A/RES/55/56[90] supporting the creation of an international certification scheme for rough diamonds.

[95] In 2019, they launched their own end-to-end traceability platform called Tracr to enable all diamonds to be identified and traced as they move from the mine to the store.

[100] In 2018, the two entities launched a program to support 500 women micro-entrepreneurs in Blouberg and Musina communities, near De Beers's Venetia diamond mine.

[101] In May 2018, De Beers's group company Element Six launched a lab-grown diamond brand to sell jewellery directly to consumers.

[106] During World War II, Ernest Oppenheimer attempted to negotiate a way around the Sherman Antitrust Act by proposing that De Beers register a US branch of the Diamond Syndicate Incorporated.

[109] A campaign was fought in an attempt to bring an end to what the indigenous rights organisation, Survival International, considers to be a genocide of a tribe that has been living in those lands for tens of thousands of years.

[110][111][112] Several international fashion models, including Iman, Lily Cole and Erin O'Connor, who were previously involved with advertising for the companies' diamonds, supported the campaign.

[119] In 2014, the Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Value, based at the University of Manchester, published a report authored by Sarah Bracking and Khadija Sharife, identifying over US$3.3 billion in price fixing within the South African rough diamond trade from 2004 to 2012, leading to an estimated deficit in tax paid of ZAR 1 billion per year.

[120] Sharife simultaneously published an article[121] disclosing the political system that cultivated revenue leakage, including the donation of De Beers staff to the State Diamond Trader (SDT).

The report, like the article, utilised aggregated data produced by the Kimberley Process (KP) certificates of import-exports, relying on figures listed by the diamond companies themselves, in which De Beers was the dominant player.

The South African Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) disclosed that De Beers did not authorise them to publish figures involving values, sales, pricing and other data, preventing transparency of the industry.