 Pamphlet from the Dutch tulipomania, printed in 1637 The term tulip mania (alternatively tulipomania) is used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble. The term originally came from the period in the history of the Netherlands during which demand for tulip bulbs reached such a peak that enormous prices were charged for a single bulb. It took place in the first part of the 17th century, especially in 1636–37. Image File history File links Pamphlet from the Dutch tulipomania, printed in 1637 Woude, C. van der Tooneel van flora : vertonende: grondelijcke redens-ondersoekinge, vanden handel der floristen : ghespeeld, op de spreucke van Anthonius de Guevara: een voorsichtich eerlijck man; sal altijt meer ghedulden, dan straffen. ...
Image File history File links Pamphlet from the Dutch tulipomania, printed in 1637 Woude, C. van der Tooneel van flora : vertonende: grondelijcke redens-ondersoekinge, vanden handel der floristen : ghespeeld, op de spreucke van Anthonius de Guevara: een voorsichtich eerlijck man; sal altijt meer ghedulden, dan straffen. ...
Events February 3 - Tulipmania collapses in Netherlands by government order February 15 - Ferdinand III becomes Holy Roman Emperor December 17 - Shimabara Rebellion erupts in Japan Pierre de Fermat makes a marginal claim to have proof of what would become known as Fermats last theorem. ...
This article is about metaphor in literature and rhetoric. ...
bubbles are things that you make out of soap. ...
The present-day territory of the Netherlands has been inhabited since the paleolithic. ...
[[Media:Example. ...
Shallot bulbs A bulb is an underground vertical shoot that has modified leaves (or thickened leaf bases) that is used as food storage organs by a dormant plant. ...
The event is remembered in part because of its extended discussion in the book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, written by popular British journalist Charles Mackay in 1843, more than two centuries after the event. Mackay omitted mentioning that during 1636-37, the Netherlands suffered from an epidemic of bubonic plague, and severe setbacks in the Thirty Years War. [1]. Modern scholars (e.g. Garber) consider the event much less extraordinary than did Mackay. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a popular history of popular folly by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. ...
Charles Mackay (1814 – 1889) was a British poet, journalist, and song writer. ...
The bubonic plague or bubonic fever is the best-known variant of the deadly infectious disease caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis (Pasteurella pestis). ...
The victory of Gustavus Adolphus at the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631) The Thirty Years War was a conflict fought between the years 1618 and 1648, principally in the central European territory of the Holy Roman Empire, but also involving most of the major continental powers. ...
History The tulip, introduced to Europe in the middle of the 16th century from the Ottoman Empire, experienced a strong growth in popularity in the United Provinces (now the Netherlands), boosted by competition between members of the upper classes for possession of the rarest tulips. Competition escalated until prices reached very high levels. [[Media:Example. ...
For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation). ...
Ottoman redirects here. ...
Map of Dutch Republic by Joannes Janssonius United Netherlands redirects here. ...
Tulip cultivation in the United Provinces is thought to have started in 1593, when Charles de L'Ecluse first bred tulips able to tolerate the harsher conditions of the Low Countries from bulbs sent to him from Turkey by Ogier de Busbecq. The flower rapidly became a coveted luxury item and a status symbol. Special breeds were given exotic names or named after Dutch naval admirals. The most spectacular and highly sought-after tulips had vivid colors, lines, and flames on the petals as a result of being infected with a tulip-specific virus known as the "Tulip Breaking potyvirus."[1] Nymphea from Rariorum plantarum historia Charles de LEcluse, LEscluse, or Carolus Clusius (Arras, February 19, 1526 - Leiden April 4, 1609), seigneur de Watènes, was the Flemish doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th century scientific horticulturists. ...
Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq from a 17th century engraving Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq (1520 or 1521-October 28, 1592; Latin: Augerius Gislenius Busbequius; sometimes Augier Ghislain de Busbecq) was the illegitmate son of the Seigneur de Busbecq, Georges Ghiselin and his mistress Catherine Hespiel. ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
Plant viruses are viruses affecting plants. ...
Popular view
 Anonymous 17th-century watercolor of the Semper Augustus, the most famous bulb, which sold for a record price. In 1623, a single bulb of a famous tulip variety could cost as much as a thousand Dutch florins (the average yearly income at the time was 150 florins). Tulips were also exchanged for land, valuable livestock, and houses. Allegedly, a good trader could earn six thousand florins a month. Image File history File links Great Tulip Book: Semper Augustus, 17th century. ...
Image File history File links Great Tulip Book: Semper Augustus, 17th century. ...
Watercolor is a painting technique making use of water-soluble pigments that are either transparent or opaque and are formulated with gum to bond the pigment to the paper. ...
ISO 4217 Code NLG User(s) The Netherlands Inflation 2. ...
By 1635, a sale of 40 bulbs for 100,000 florins was recorded. By way of comparison, a ton of butter cost around 100 florins and "eight fat swine" 240 florins. A record was the sale of the most famous bulb, the Semper Augustus, for 6,000 florins in Haarlem. Coordinates: , Country Province Area (2006) - Municipality 32. ...
By 1636, tulips were traded on the stock exchanges of numerous Dutch towns and cities. This encouraged trading in tulips by all members of society, with many people selling or trading their other possessions in order to speculate in the tulip market. Some speculators made large profits as a result. Others lost all or even more than they had. Speculation involves the buying, holding, and selling of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, collectibles, real estate, derivatives or any valuable financial instrument to profit from fluctuations in its price as opposed to buying it for use or for income via methods such as dividends or interest. ...
Some traders sold tulip bulbs that had only just been planted or those they intended to plant (in effect, tulip futures contracts). This phenomenon was dubbed windhandel, or "wind trade", and took place mostly in the taverns of small towns using an arcane slate system to indicate bid prices. (The term windhandel is similar to the recent term vaporware: both have much the same metaphor.) A state edict from 1610 (well before the alleged bubble) made that trade illegal by refusing to enforce the contracts, but the legislation failed to curtail the activity. In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract, traded on a futures exchange, to buy or sell a certain underlying instrument at a certain date in the future, at a specified price. ...
A writing slate is a piece of flat material used as a medium for writing. ...
Vaporware is software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle. ...
This article is about metaphor in literature and rhetoric. ...
In February 1637 tulip traders could no longer get inflated prices for their bulbs, and they began to sell. The bubble burst. People began to suspect that the demand for tulips could not last, and as this spread a panic developed. Some were left holding contracts to purchase tulips at prices now ten times greater than those on the open market, while others found themselves in possession of bulbs now worth a fraction of the price they had paid. Allegedly, thousands of Dutch, including businessmen and dignitaries, were financially ruined. A stock market bubble is a type of economic bubble taking place in stock markets when price of stocks rise and become overvalued by any measure of stock valuation. ...
Attempts were made to resolve the situation to the satisfaction of all parties, but these were unsuccessful. Ultimately, individuals were stuck with the bulbs they held at the end of the crash—no court would enforce payment of a contract, since judges regarded the debts as contracted through gambling, and thus not enforceable in law.
Lesser versions of the tulipomania also occurred in other parts of Europe, although matters never reached the state they had in the Netherlands. In England in 1800, it was common to pay fifteen guineas for a single tulip bulb. This sum would have kept a labourer and his family in food, clothes and lodging for six months. For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ...
Charles Mackay, in his book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds', tells a story of the time: Charles Mackay (1814 – 1889) was a British poet, journalist, and song writer. ...
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a popular history of popular folly by Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. ...
A wealthy merchant had paid 3,000 florins (280 pounds sterling) for a rare Semper Augustus tulip bulb, and it disappeared from his warehouse. After thoroughly searching his warehouse, he saw a sailor (who had mistaken the tulip bulb for an onion) eating it. The sailor was promptly arrested and spent months in jail.
Competing views Mike Dash, author of the modern popular history "Tulipomania," states - The history of the tulip mania itself, however, remains remarkably obscure, and even now it has never been the subject of an exhaustive scholarly inquiry.
- ....My general feeling, after reviewing the available material, is that even after sounding the necessary notes of caution about the reliability of the popular accounts, historians and particularly economists remain guilty of exaggerating the real importance and extent of the tulip mania. (p.222, footnote)
Anne Goldgar, in her scholarly analysis Tulipmania, argues that the phenomenon was limited to "a fairly small group" and that most accounts of the period "are based on one or two contemporary pieces of propaganda and a prodigious amount of plagiarism". She argues that tulips were treated more like art, for which high-status people paid exorbitant prices in the pursuit of beauty. She also notes that deals for tulips were made far in advance of when the tulips were dug out of the ground and paid for and that when the tulip market crashed, buyers simply didn't pay for their trades.[2]
A 2002 paper by UCLA's Earl A. Thompson and Jonathan Treussard, "The Tulipmania: Fact or Artifact?", provides an alternate explanation for Dutch tulip mania: that it was not caused by irrational speculation, but rather by a Dutch parliamentary decree (originally sponsored by Dutch investors made skittish by the Thirty Years' War then in progress) that made the purchase of tulip-bulb "futures contracts" a nearly risk-free proposition: Binomial name Ucla xenogrammus Holleman, 1993 The largemouth triplefin, Ucla xenogrammus, is a fish of the family Tripterygiidae and only member of the genus Ucla, found in the Pacific Ocean from Viet Nam, the Philippines, Palau and the Caroline Islands to Papua New Guinea, Australia (including Christmas Island), and the...
Combatants Sweden Bohemia Denmark-Norway (Until 1643) Dutch Republic France Scotland England Saxony Holy Roman Empire ( Catholic League) Spain Austria Bavaria Commanders Frederick V Buckingham Leven Gustav II Adolf †Johan Baner Cardinal Richelieu Louis II de Bourbon Turenne Christian IV of Denmark Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar Johann Georg I of...
- ...both the famous popular discussion of Mackay and the famous academic discussion of Posthumus, 1929, point out a highly peculiar part of this episode. In particular, they tell us that, on February 24, 1637, the self-regulating guild of Dutch florists, in a decision that was later ratified by the Dutch Parliament, announced that all futures contracts written after November 30, 1636 and before the re-opening of the cash market in the early Spring, were to be to [sic] interpreted as option contracts. They did this by simply relieving the futures buyers of the obligation to buy the future tulips, forcing them merely to compensate the sellers with a small fixed percentage of the contract price.
Given data about the specific payoffs present in the futures and option contracts, the authors determine that tulip bulb prices in fact hewed closely to what a rational economic model would dictate: "tulip contract prices before, during, and after the 'tulipmania' appear to provide a remarkable illustration of market efficiency."
References
See also Other bubbles The Tulip Era is an important period for the Ottoman Empire. ...
Hogarthian image of the South Sea Bubble by Edward Matthew Ward, Tate Gallery More well known than The South Sea Company is perhaps the South Sea Bubble (1711 - September 1720) which is the name given to the economic bubble that occurred through overheated speculation in the company shares during 1720. ...
A scene typical of the Follies of Florenz Ziegfeld, the most popular Broadway impresario of the decade. ...
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 during which stock markets in Western nations saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new Internet sector and related fields. ...
Further reading - Mike Dash, Tulipomania: The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused (1999) ISBN 0-575-06723-3
- Doug French, The Dutch monetary environment during tulipomania (2006)
- Peter M. Garber, "Tulipmania", The Journal of Political Economy, 97, 535-560 (1989)
- Garber, Peter M., Famous First Bubbles: The Fundamentals of Early Manias, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000.
- Goldgar, Anne, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2007.
- Charles P. Kindleberger Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (2000) ISBN 978-0471389453
- The Tulip Mania, Harper's New Monthly Magazinhttp: No. CCCXL, April 1876, Vol. LII.
- Anna Pavord, The Tulip (2004) ISBN 0-7475-7190-2
- Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire (2001) ISBN 0-375-76039-3
Charles P. Kindleberger (1910 to July 7, 2003) was a historical economist and author of over 30 books. ...
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