Tulip mania is the 17th-century Dutch craze often described as an early speculative market bubble.
In the Dutch Republic, unusual tulip varieties became highly desirable during the 1630s. Contracts for bulbs changed hands at rising prices, and stories later circulated about fortunes being made from rare specimens. The market collapsed in February 1637 when buyers failed to appear at an auction in Haarlem, causing confidence to weaken.
The episode is frequently presented as the first great speculative bubble, but modern historians debate its scale and economic importance. Some popular accounts claim that ordinary Dutch society was ruined nationwide, while archival research suggests the direct damage was more limited and concentrated among participants. The market involved contracts and future deliveries, not a modern exchange trading shares of public companies.
Tulip mania is therefore relevant to the history of crashes as a famous example of speculative psychology, but it was not a stock-market crash in the strict modern sense. The South Sea and Mississippi bubbles of 1720 involved companies and securities more directly.