For those not in the know, these are tulips.
These little guys have made themselves a name as a symbol of deep love and peace. However, there is no time that such a love has been shown for the flowers themselves, arguably, than when they were first brought to Holland in the mid seventeenth century, with the arrival of the tulip leading to speculations of their worth within dutch society that would have their prices shoot so high that a single bulb of some varieties could cost you a house on the Amsterdam canal - making them, at the time, more valuable than gold. That was before their rapid decline in price only three years later, leading to an alleged economic crash.
This phenomenon has come to be known today as "tulip mania", and it's mostly referenced in finance circles as the first recorded economic bubble. This would make it akin to the likes of NFTs, both in its cycle of popularity in society and how it was used as a status symbol, as well as its worth being based purely on speculation and it, in hindsight, being nothing more than a scam. But that is neither here nor there.
Tulip mania, unlike most economic bubbles, had a much larger effect on social beliefs surrounding success and how it's achieved in the world within the lower class - and opened up to some of the ideas we ourselves think surrounding success. This is what makes it so interesting to me. So, I hope you'll join me to take a little look into the tulip mania of 1634.
Let's go back to the beginning, and across the sea, to the ottoman empire, which is what we know now as modern day Turkey. The country had begun cultivating the flower around a century before, after they were brought to the empire from where they originated from in Kazakhstan, when the Ottomans conquered a part of the land. The flower had quickly become a symbol of the empire's rich, with it often seen in textiles, folklore, and across the streets of Constantinople, of which is now known as Istanbul. It even, most famously, became common for sultans to add that flare to their look by adding upon the top of their turbans. In fact, it is believed that this practice originated the name of the flower, as turban in turkan is "tulipan". The resemblance is pretty clear.
Regardless, All of this is to say that the flowers were already a pretty big deal in the empire, with the wealthy drooling over them. It is also so that it makes sense to you why sultans were known to give tulips to some lucky nobles. One of these nobles was allegedly herbalist and ambassador Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, and he's pretty important in all this, as it's claimed he is the one that brought the flower over to western Europe. Busbecq, as an ambassador to the Austrian monarchy, naturally brought the flowers' seeds back to Vienna with him. When he returned, the seeds were brought into the hands of a man called Carolus Clusius, who worked in the monarchy's botanical gardens at the time. Clusius would go on to be one of the most respected men in his field ever.
It was only when Clusius became a professor at Leiden University in 1593, however, that he would plant the tulip bulbs in his famous botanical garden and start his research on them: marking the first planting of the flowers in the Netherlands, and laying the (metaphorical) seeds for the later mania.
Fast forward around thirty years or so, twenty years after Clusius' death, and his research on tulips is as prevalent as ever. The botanist had spent a large deal of his final years on this research, but the most notable is his observations on tulip varieties, of which he cited there to be thirty four of, and of something the flower world calls the tulip breaking virus, though the virus part would only be discovered much later in 1920s England.
"Breaking" causes tulips to develop a feathery pattern on their petals that are often a different hue to the rest of the flower, which gives them a very beautiful appearance. It is these sort of patterns that we often see in 1600s art of the flowers, and the pattern that appears on tulips due to the virus is considered the largest impact towards the later event.
The trend of gifting tulips within nobles continued, with young wealthy men began to give the "broken" flowers within their inner circles of friends, as if they were the historical equivalent to training cards. It was only when these groups, often referred to as bloemisten, started being contacted by parties they did not know that the market for the rare flowers really started to take off, as they started trading them for money rather than having them be a gesture. Around this time, it is still estimated that a few tulip varieties already went for the price of an average townhouse.
And then all hell broke loose. Both young salesmen and professional traders were thrown into the mix, raking in cash for the simple fact of owning a broken tulip bulb - and the profits were great, and the widespread love of the flower made it seem their value would fly up evermore. Not only was the trade so great in size that it was the centre of forward markets at the time, but people were using them to take out loans for large settlements on the Amsterdam canal, ready to prepare a family legacy based on bulbs they could not truly afford. More and more citizens bought into it, creating a vicious cycle of presumed worth.
Naturally, because of this oversaturation in the newfound tulip industry, the economy crashed - but did it? Recent findings would say not, it merely being an example of our society exaggerating history in order to present real events as fairy tales with clear-cut morals. Because those who bought these tulips as long term investments had wealth to begin with, they were hardly plunged into poverty because of the tulips' immediate decline in worth. Neither did the chimney sweep end up worse than he was before, for he held something that was essentially fools’ gold by the end of it. Much like the NFT boom of today, it just ended in a majority of citizens who were involved feeling like chumps for painting their future with an object.
It did, however, aid the romantic notions of success that would go on to shape our world today. It was a fad, yes, but it was one where anybody could potentially be renowned. All you need is a bulb. There's something beautiful in that. But regardless of this, take this as a wake up call to the emotional attachment to monetary worth in these fads, which pop up all the more often now, and don't make yourself their next victim. You don't want to be the one written down in history as having dived into the river after losing your fortune through something as stupid than the simple tulip.
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