The 17th-century Dutch financial mania centered on rare tulip bulbs is known as tulip mania.
Tulip mania occurred in the Dutch Republic during the 1630s, when contracts for some tulip bulbs traded at extraordinarily high prices. The market reached a speculative peak in early 1637, followed by a rapid loss of confidence and falling prices. The episode is often presented as one of history’s earliest recorded speculative bubbles.
Modern historians caution that popular accounts exaggerate its scale. The famous story that the entire Dutch economy collapsed because of tulips is not supported by the historical evidence. The downturn affected participants in the bulb trade, but it did not produce a nationwide economic depression comparable to the Great Depression.
Tulip mania remains important because it illustrates recurring patterns: scarcity narratives, leveraged speculation, rapidly rising prices, and a sudden disappearance of buyers. It is a historical market episode rather than a modern stock-exchange crash.