The Dutch financial panic in 1637 often linked to collapsing tulip-bulb prices is called tulip mania.
Tulip mania occurred in the Dutch Republic during the 1630s, when contracts for particular tulip varieties traded at increasingly high prices. The market reached a turning point in Haarlem in February 1637, when an auction reportedly failed to attract buyers. Confidence weakened, and prices fell rapidly.
The episode is frequently presented as the first major speculative bubble, but historians debate both its scale and its consequences. Recent research suggests that the popular story may exaggerate how broadly the speculation affected Dutch households and the wider economy. Many transactions involved contracts rather than actual delivery of bulbs.
Tulip mania is still useful as a cautionary example of speculative behavior, especially the belief that prices can rise indefinitely. It was not a modern stock-market crash: the objects traded were tulip bulbs and related contracts, not shares in public corporations. That distinction makes the episode a neighboring example rather than a conventional exchange crash.