This article analyzes the episode from Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent (1800) in which the spendthrift Sir Kit Rackrent abruptly marries "the grandest heiress in England" in order to repair his finances, only to imprison his new wife in her bedchamber when she won't relinquish her costly diamond jewelry to him. Thady, the elderly Irish narrator of the tale, appears to condone such abuse, perhaps because he is "shocked" and confounded by his master's bride, whom he describes alternatively as "a Jewish," a "blackamoor," and "a nabob." I will argue that Thady's bewilderment over her racial, ethnic, and religious identities, linked with the "thousands of English pounds concealed in diamonds about her person," associate Sir Kit's new wife with early colonial India given that "nabobs" and diamonds were commonly paired as the visible buyers and signs, respectively, of colonial rapacity during this era. Other references to diamonds in Edgeworth's works concretize their connection to exploitative colonial and sexual economies while helping to forge an associative link between British "nabobs" and European Jews by means of the Indian diamond trade. Diamonds in Castle Rackrent thus crystallize cultural anxieties regarding "commerce" - in all of the manifestations of that term - relating to both of these groups.
