The 1637 Dutch financial crisis widely associated with collapsing tulip-bulb speculation is called Tulip mania.
Tulip mania developed in the Dutch Republic during the 1630s, when contracts for tulip bulbs and their future delivery reached exceptionally high prices. The market turned in February 1637, when an auction in Haarlem reportedly failed to attract buyers. Prices then dropped sharply, leaving some participants unable or unwilling to complete contracts.
The episode is often presented as the first great speculative bubble, but modern historians qualify that description. Tulip trading was concentrated among particular merchants and enthusiasts, and the evidence does not show that the entire Dutch economy was ruined. Many popular stories about fortunes lost and widespread bankruptcies were amplified by later moralistic accounts.
Tulip mania is still important in crash history because it illustrates recurring features of speculative markets: fashionable assets, rising expectations, leveraged commitments, and a sudden disappearance of buyers. It is also distinct from later share-market crashes, because tulip bulbs and bulb contracts were commodities rather than ordinary company shares.