Tulip mania was the Dutch flower-bulb bubble often cited as an early example of speculative market mania.
The episode occurred in the Dutch Republic during the 1630s, especially in the market for tulip bulbs and contracts to buy them. Tulips were luxury goods associated with status, and rare varieties could command very high prices. Speculators entered the market hoping to resell contracts at still higher prices, creating a rapid rise in quoted values.
In February 1637, confidence weakened and some auctions failed to attract buyers. Prices then fell sharply. Historians continue to debate how large the bubble was and how many people were affected. Popular retellings sometimes portray the entire Dutch economy as being destroyed, but surviving evidence does not support such an extreme version.
Tulip mania is useful as a cautionary story about herd behavior, leverage, and the belief that an asset can always be sold to someone else for more. It was not a modern stock-market crash, because the underlying assets were tulip bulbs and related contracts rather than company shares.