A period in the Dutch Republic, peaking in the winter of 1636 to 1637, during which contract prices for tulip bulbs, especially rare virus-streaked broken varieties, rose to extraordinary levels before collapsing in February 1637. It is traditionally presented as history's first recorded speculative bubble and a byword for irrational market mania, though the scale of the traditional account is itself a live dispute among economic historians.
The traditional account, repeated in most general reference works, treats the episode as an irrational, economy-wide speculative bubble. The economic historian Peter Garber and others who have gone back to the surviving contract and notarial records argue the traditional account overstates both the prices actually paid and the economic damage the collapse caused, since most of the trading ran through forward contracts among a comparatively small circle of specialist growers and merchants rather than the general public, and few buyers ever paid the peak contract prices in cash. Both readings are represented here rather than picking one as settled.
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1. Wikipedia: Tulip mania
Tulip mania, Speculative period
in February 1637, tulip bulb contract prices collapsed abruptly and the trade of tulips ground to a halt.
In Group: Early Modern Speculative Manias, Lead
Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels.
View the Source2. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.- Tulip Mania
britannica.com/money/Tulip-Mania
Tulips were introduced into Europe from Turkey shortly after 1550, and the delicately formed, vividly colored flowers became a popular if costly item.
- Associated With: South Sea Bubble, South Sea Bubble
View the Source 3. Wikipedia
Wikimedia FoundationTulip mania
in February 1637, tulip bulb contract prices collapsed abruptly and the trade of tulips ground to a halt
Associated With: Mississippi Bubble, Tulip mania (Wikipedia), Social Mania and Legacy section
Nearly a century later, during the crash of the Mississippi Company and the South Sea Company in about 1720, tulip mania appeared in satires of these manias.
View the Source Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Historian Anne Goldgar (Tulip Mania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age) argues the traditional "national mania" narrative overstates the episode's scope and severity: per the Wikipedia synthesis of her research, she found the phenomenon was limited to "a fairly small group," and that most contemporary accounts "are based on one or two contemporary pieces of propaganda and a prodigious amount of plagiarism." Economist Peter Garber makes a related argument that the trade in common bulbs was ordinary market activity rather than mass irrational speculation.
A dissenting reading, from Anne GoldgarWikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation
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