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Tulip Mania In 1700s Holland

Zeke Newbold

Carbon based biped.
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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!
 
There is some speculation the the 'tulipmania' bubble was heavily over exagerated.

"The speculative frenzy over tulips in 17th century Holland spawned outrageous prices for exotic flower bulbs. But accounts of the subsequent crash may be more fiction than fact. In 1636, according to an 1841 account by Scottish author Charles MacKay, the entirety of Dutch society went crazy over exotic tulips.17 Mar 2020"

https://www.history.com/news/tulip-mania-financial-crash-holland
 
There is some speculation the the 'tulipmania' bubble was heavily over exagerated.

"The speculative frenzy over tulips in 17th century Holland spawned outrageous prices for exotic flower bulbs. But accounts of the subsequent crash may be more fiction than fact. In 1636, according to an 1841 account by Scottish author Charles MacKay, the entirety of Dutch society went crazy over exotic tulips.17 Mar 2020"

https://www.history.com/news/tulip-mania-financial-crash-holland
Which is what I'd said in my O.P - if you had read it! :chuckle:
 
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And there is of course the book by Mike Dash

Tulipomania...

Stumbled across a hardback copy of that from a charity shop in Edinburgh a while back. It's a really fascinating read and goes into everything from the economics of the time, to the history of the plant and the horticulture involved in producing the multiple varieties the market demanded. That said, I'll admit to taking a breather from it a couple of times - there are only so many tulips a person can take without needing a break.

Although I'm pretty sure that there are elements of exaggeration, I can't help thinking that Goldgar's slightly dismissive tone might be veering a little too much the other way. Dash provides plenty of - non MacKay sourced - evidence that the craze and subsequent crash were very real things, devastating to some players - and also that it affected a broader section of society than the article seems to suggest. It wasn't just the rich - very cheap varieties of bulb were developed and sold to much less well-heeled speculators, with the promise of incredibly high returns, and many modest producers were forced into the race by the changes in demand. In the early days, this worked for some - but, needless to say, it didn't last long.
 
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...Tulip mania wasn’t a frenzy, either. In fact, for much of the period trading was relatively calm, located in taverns and neighbourhoods rather than on the stock exchange...

This - from the article in the first post - grates a bit. Boozers were hugely important centres in local communities, which provided a locus for many more activities than just drinking - including administrative, as well as commercial and social. Granted, the Antwerp exchange - the first in the world - existed long before the time of the mania, but it did not have a monopoly on servicing local commerce. (It's maybe also worth bearing in mind that much of the work of the early London Stock Exchange was done in coffee houses.) The implication that that the business of economics was somehow less serious because it occurred in places that sold beer (or coffee) is, at best, a non-sequitur; I know Goldgar is an historian, and I am not - but it really is.
 
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I have to wait for the coffee high to calm down, so no sources, but it seems that the infamous epidemic of jumping from windows in New York's 1929 stock crash is also an exaggeration.
 
Tulip mania is covered in Manias, Panics and Crashes: A history of Financial Crises by Charles Kindleberger and robert Z. Aliber. They conclude that the mania lead to a decline in economic activity. That the mania should be seen in the context of a general boom, the mania involving "small-town dealers, tavern-keepers and horticulturalists". The wealthy mostly making money in other ways.It lists tulip mania as the first in the big ten financial rises. I have the Fifth Edition.


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Manias, Panics, and Crashes
A History of Financial Crises, Seventh Edition
Authors: Aliber, Robert Z., Kindleberger, Charles P.
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This seventh edition of an investment classic has been thoroughly revised and expanded following the latest crises to hit international markets. Renowned economist Robert Z. Aliber introduces the concept that global financial crises in recent years are not independent events, but symptomatic of an inherent instability in the international system.
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.........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!

Yes! Colour variations which affected those original tulip mania plants were often the result of botanical viruses AKA 'TBVs' (Tulip breaking virus) - which came from a group of plant viruses known to cause damage in potato family plants. These tulips, although highly prized, were harder to grow and maintain.

Semper Augustus was the famous variety:

SemperAugustus.jpg


Modern tulip colour variations and shapes are the result of selective breeding and growers/suppliers are screened for TBVs - modern types that get infected with a TBV are often weakened and damaged by the disease.

Next week on Fortean Gardening - how to grow Mandrake roots and the best way to get haunted parsnips!
 
I have a very nice signed paperback copy of The Tulip, by Anna Pavord, from the year 2000.

I have been offered seventeen million pounds for it but I think I could do still better. She has very nice handwriting!

Or I'll keep it and cross it with a signed Beryl Bainbridge to create a new and unusual hybrid! :yay:
 
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