The Dutch financial mania of the 1630s centered on tulip bulbs and later became a crash legend known as Tulip mania.
Tulips became fashionable in the Dutch Republic after their introduction from the Ottoman world, and rare varieties commanded attention among wealthy buyers. During the winter of 1636–1637, contracts for bulbs were traded at rapidly rising prices, including agreements for bulbs that had not yet been harvested.
Prices collapsed in February 1637 after buyers stopped appearing at an auction in Haarlem. The famous story that the collapse ruined the entire Dutch economy is exaggerated. Historians continue to debate the scale of speculation, the number of participants, and the extent of actual financial losses.
Tulip mania is still used as a warning about speculative bubbles, but it differs from later stock-market crashes because the traded objects were bulbs and forward contracts rather than shares in public corporations. The episode also gave financial history one of its best-known bubble metaphors.