The 1637 Dutch financial bubble often cited as the first speculative market crash was called Tulip mania.
During the Dutch Golden Age, contracts for tulip bulbs and their future delivery were traded at increasingly high prices. In early 1637, confidence broke, and many buyers could no longer find willing purchasers at the prices they expected.
Popular stories portray tulip mania as a vast national economic catastrophe, but modern historians argue that its overall impact was more limited. The market mainly involved particular contracts and wealthy or commercially active participants rather than the entire Dutch economy.
Tulip mania is still important because it illustrates a recurring pattern: prices can rise far above ordinary use value when buyers expect to resell at even higher prices. It is not the same event as the 1720 South Sea Bubble.