Tulip mania is the Dutch speculative episode often cited as the first recorded financial bubble. It reached its most intense phase in the Dutch Republic during 1636 and early 1637, when contracts for tulip bulbs changed hands at extraordinary prices.
Tulips had become fashionable luxury goods, and rare varieties attracted wealthy collectors and merchants. Speculators began trading contracts for bulbs that might be delivered later, allowing prices to rise far beyond ordinary horticultural value.
In February 1637, an auction in Haarlem reportedly failed to attract buyers, and confidence weakened. Prices fell rapidly, although the exact scale of the collapse and its effect on the wider Dutch economy have been exaggerated in many later accounts.
Tulip mania is not a stock-market crash in the modern exchange-listed sense. It is included in financial-crash history because it illustrates speculative bubbles, leverage, crowd behavior, and the danger of assuming that prices can rise indefinitely.