Tulip mania was the 1637 Dutch speculative collapse often called the first recorded stock-market crash.
Tulip mania centered on contracts for tulip bulbs in the Dutch Republic, especially rare varieties that were difficult to produce. Prices rose sharply during the 1630s as traders speculated that bulbs could be resold at still higher prices. In early February 1637, confidence broke, and buyers became unwilling to pay the previously quoted amounts.
The episode is frequently used as an early example of a speculative bubble. Some contracts changed hands without the physical bulbs being delivered, which made the market especially vulnerable to changing expectations. Historians, however, caution that later popular accounts exaggerated the scale of the collapse and its damage to the entire Dutch economy.
Tulip mania was not a modern stock-market crash in the technical sense, because tulip contracts are not shares in publicly traded companies. It is nevertheless closely linked to the history of financial speculation and is commonly compared with later bubbles such as the South Sea Bubble and the dot-com boom.