Zeke Newbold
Carbon based biped.
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2015
- Messages
- 1,249
Though it was mentioned by Ramon last year (https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/extraordinary-popular-delusions.9700/#post-1938285) I thought the `tulpenmanie` period of the `Dutch Golden Age` is Fortean enough to have its own thread.
And it is getting alluded to quite a lot these days with respect to Bitcoin. This is because the financial speculation around tulips that gripped he Netherlands in the 1700s is viewed now as one of the first financial bubbles. (It even gets name-checked by Gordon Gecko in Wall Street!)
Briefly, in early 1600 the tulip became a fashionable item to own and to cultivate for reasons of its beauty. Soon, however, it could fetch the sort of prices where it was a tradeable asset in its own right and people began to invest in the tulip in order to get a bigger return. A single tulip could cost the equivalent of a year's wages for some, or a house or a marriage dowry. The situation came to a head in 1637 when the economy crashed and a lot of people were left penniless as a result.
So goes the popular story - but recent historians have claimed that there is a fair degree of exaggeration in some of the subsequent accounts:
https://theconversation.com/tulip-m...-dutch-financial-bubble-is-mostly-wrong-91413
So people drowning themselves in the canals because of it.... or that story of a foreign sailor imprisoned for eating a tulip bulb, thinking it to be an onion probabaly didn't happen. The culprit behind the mythologisation of it all seems to be the poet and journalist Charles Mackay (also mentioned in the above thread) who was a contributor to The Sun and a bit of a sensationalist.
Nevertheless, it did happen and it's still pretty Fortean. Plus there's a nice little twist to the tale: the most sought after tulips were the ones that had coloured details on their petals rather than being one colour. It is now known that this attribute owes to a disease of the plant!
And it is getting alluded to quite a lot these days with respect to Bitcoin. This is because the financial speculation around tulips that gripped he Netherlands in the 1700s is viewed now as one of the first financial bubbles. (It even gets name-checked by Gordon Gecko in Wall Street!)
Briefly, in early 1600 the tulip became a fashionable item to own and to cultivate for reasons of its beauty. Soon, however, it could fetch the sort of prices where it was a tradeable asset in its own right and people began to invest in the tulip in order to get a bigger return. A single tulip could cost the equivalent of a year's wages for some, or a house or a marriage dowry. The situation came to a head in 1637 when the economy crashed and a lot of people were left penniless as a result.
So goes the popular story - but recent historians have claimed that there is a fair degree of exaggeration in some of the subsequent accounts:
https://theconversation.com/tulip-m...-dutch-financial-bubble-is-mostly-wrong-91413
So people drowning themselves in the canals because of it.... or that story of a foreign sailor imprisoned for eating a tulip bulb, thinking it to be an onion probabaly didn't happen. The culprit behind the mythologisation of it all seems to be the poet and journalist Charles Mackay (also mentioned in the above thread) who was a contributor to The Sun and a bit of a sensationalist.
Nevertheless, it did happen and it's still pretty Fortean. Plus there's a nice little twist to the tale: the most sought after tulips were the ones that had coloured details on their petals rather than being one colour. It is now known that this attribute owes to a disease of the plant!