1. Diamonds in Borneo: Commodities as
Concepts in Context
Karin Hofmeester, International Institute of Social History; Ashkan Ashkpour,
International Institute of Social History; Katrien Depuydt, Instituut voor de
Nederlandse Taal; Jesse de Does, Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal; Martin
Reynaert, Meertens Institute

2. Commodities (as Concepts in
Context)
The intensified circulation of people, commodities and ideas
is one of the characteristics of a globalizing world
To understand the causes and consequences of these
circulations, we have to know which commodities circulated
when and where, on what scale and who made them circulate

3. Diamonds

4. Why Borneo ?
The diamond industry in Borneo has been a true blind spot in
our knowledge on the global diamond commodity chain.
Before 1720’s Borneo was one of the only places where
diamonds were found
After the 19th century diamonds from Borneo disappeared from
the global commodity chain
Little information on where diamonds were found, who the
miners and traders were, which mining techniques were used
and if there was really an ‘age-old’ diamond polishing industry
as literature suggests.

5. Goals
1. Overarching goal: to fill the gaps in our knowledge on
Diamond mining, trading and polishing in Borneo
2. To develop a workflow that could also be used by other
researchers looking into commodities (sugar, indigo,
slaves..)
3. To be a useful use case for various CLARIAH components;
detecting and documenting successes and problems; adding
a wish list of new or adapted functionality

6. Workflow
Leviticus
Encyclopedia
(pdf)
FineReader
OCR
Leviticus
Encyclopedia
(Abbyy XML)
Leviticus
Encyclopedia
(Structured TEI XML)
Conversion
and curation
Concept lists (csv):
- Diamond industry
- Geography
- Commodities
extraction
Linked data (RDF)
CLARIAH
COW
DiaMaNT Lexicon
(RDF and Postgres)
Borneo
Place name gazetteer
(excel, csv)
Geographic enrichment
and curation
External commodity resources
DSS + BGB (RDF)
Enhanced
querying
Extracted article data
(XML and Postgres DB)
Delpher corpus
(indexed newspaper article xml)
Concept linking
Research results
Analysis in
lex’it tool
Leviticus
Gold standard version
(FoLiA)
PICCL and manual curation
Concept linking

7. De 1908 Geïllustreerde encyclopaedie der
diamantnijverheid by Felix Leviticus

8. From text to structured data
1. OCR with Finereader 11 à Abbyy XML
2. Generic conversion Abbyy XML à Structured TEI XML
3. Specific structure extraction à TEI with article structure
and tagged headwords and headword translations in French,
English and German
4. Manual correction of headwords and translations in Oxygen

9. From Text to Structured Data
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/levi010geil01_01/index.php

10. Concept List
- Selection of 75 headwords
- Selection made based on four categories:
- Diamond properties
- Headwords related to material characteristics such as colour, substance, type of cut, weight or
application etc.
- Diamond mining
- Headwords such as diamond mine, mine worker, deposit etc.
- Diamond trade
- Headwords such as supply, diamond market, diamond broker etc.
- Diamond industry
- Headwords related to occupations such as diamond cutter, diamond polisher, diamond worker,
mill and polishing factory etc.

11. Enriching the Encyclopedia data with:
DiaMaNT
DiaMaNT allow us to deal with the diachronic variation in spelling and in vocabulary. By linking
concepts to DiaMaNT, there is an expansion of the search lexicon with additional synonyms and
historical variant spellings
Expands concepts like juweel ("jewel") semantically with bijou, bijouterie, kleinood, sieraad and
morphosyntactically with iuweel, iuweelen, jouweelen, jueelen, juweel, juweele, juweelen, juwel,
juwelen, sueelen, sueweelen, juweel, juwelen
Place names Borneo
498 geographical entities extracted from 6 different sources.
Includes: historical and contemporary spelling variants, synonyms and references to rivers and
mountains. The used place names have between 52 (Kottaringin) to 195.964 (Tandjong) results
in Delpher
Dutch Ships and Sailors (DSS) and Bookkeeper-General Batavia (BGB)
External sources containing variables of interest such as: place names in Borneo, voyages
(including departure and cargo information) and Diamond related concepts.

12. Linked Data
Web of Documents > The Web of Data

14. Query and Build
Create various
(combined) Queries
Icons made by Freepik from https://www.flaticon.com
Build a
corpus
adapted and enhanced version of scripts
developed in the CLARIAH research pilot
Serpens

15. Why queries?
● Lots of irrelevant hits when you look for ‘diamant’

16. Query Example
http://jsru.kb.nl/sru/sru?version=1.2&operation=searchRetrieve&recordSchema=ddd&x-
collection=DDD_artikel&startRecord=0&maximumRecords=1&query=date+within+%2201-01-1800+31-12-
1939%22+AND+(("Tandjong"+OR+"Pontianak"+OR+"Simpang"+OR+"Samarinda"+OR+"Balikpapan"+OR+"Karimat
a"+OR+"Balmoral"+OR+"Sambas"+OR+"Pappan"+OR+"Negara"+OR+"Bangkalan"+OR+"Bandjar"+OR+"Tengah"+
OR+"Banjermassing"+OR+"Martapoera"+OR+"Sarawak"+OR+"Tjempaka"+OR+"Bandjermassing"+OR+"Marabaha
n"+OR+"Montrado"+OR+"Sandakan"+OR+"Malano"+OR+"Landak"+OR+"Kendangan"+OR+"Pengaron"+OR+"Mam
pawa"+OR+"Sanggau"+OR+"Barabei"+OR+"Pamangkat"+OR+"Sinkawang"+OR+"Tanah+Laut"+OR+"Tanah-
Laut"+OR+"Bandjarmassing"+OR+"Riam+Kanan"+OR+"Tjampaka"+OR+"Pegattan"+OR+"Tandjoengpoera"+OR+"
Ngabang"+OR+"Tabanio"+OR+"Riam+Kiwa"+OR+"Darvel+Bay"+OR+"Sekadau"+OR+"Kalimantan"+OR+"Vlakke+H
oek"+OR+"Kotawaringin"+OR+"Panisse"+OR+"Jesselton"+OR+"Pontein"+OR+"Katingan"+OR+"Elopura"+OR+"M
arudu"+OR+"Passara"+OR+"Batti-
Batti"+OR+"Mataon"+OR+"Tabaran"+OR+"Kotaringin"+OR+"Kottaringin")+AND+(diamant+OR+diamanten+OR+dia
mants+OR+djamant+OR+dyamanten+OR+diamant+OR+diamanten))

17. Curating Relevant Results:

18. Results

19. Promising Results
Our results show that (in contrast to current literature) mining, trading and
polishing continued on the same scale as in the seventeenth century,
though now mainly for customers in Southeast Asia (Explaining why the
general descriptions of diamond production and trade, often written from a
European perspective, neglected this part of the global diamond commodity
chain). They never reached us.

20. Promising Results
When comparing the scale of the produce in Borneo with Brazil and later South
Africa, Borneo is not a very important diamond hub in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries.
However, if we look at the production, trade, finishing and consumption of
diamonds in Southeast Asia, Borneo is an important center.

21. Promising Results
Interesting descriptions of the mining techniques used to dig up diamonds
from the alluvial sediment in the ground, a technique less well known than river
bed washing techniques but similar to the techniques used in India at the
same time.
Even the description of family work in the diamond fields as well as the
religious rituals performed at the start of a new mining process to make the
operation successful are similar to India

22. Promising Results
Most interesting are overview articles on the diamond mining and polishing
industry in Borneo. One article for example describes the diamond fields in
South Borneo, mentions four new diamond deposit and polishing locations:
Tabalong, Latsai, Siang, Moerong and Toenggoel Irang which we did not know
about.

23. ● What we delivered
● The creation of a deposit of relevant newspaper articles on diamonds in
Borneo
● Best possible version of the Diamond Encyclopedia
● The concept list (as Linked Data)
● Place names as (Linked Data)

24. Training v. manual selection process – building a classifier
Extending the queries with new place names, concepts etc.
Apply this workflow on other commodities: i.e. sugar (bulk goods)
Instead of newspapers > books or travel reports
Future Work

25. Karin Hofmeester, International Institute of Social History; Ashkan Ashkpour,
International Institute of Social History; Katrien Depuydt, Instituut voor de
Nederlandse Taal; Jesse de Does, Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal; Martin
Reynaert, Meertens Institute
Thank You

26. Thank You