Tulipomania
Tulipomania
Finance & Business Performance
November 2013
The Rise of the Tulip
Tulipomania refers to the hysteria that gripped the Netherlands during the end of 1636 and the beginning of 1637. This event is arguably the world's first recorded financial crisis. During the aptly called “mania” the tulip flower reached costs that were so exorbitant, men were paying the value of an entire estate for one single bulb of the captivating flower. In order to fully understand the phenomenon we must examine the lineage of the tulip and the time in which it reached such success.
The first tulips are said to have been wild flowers growing in the Valleys of Tien Shan where China and Tibet meet Russia and Afghanistan. These are ancestors of the tulips we know today and indeed of the plethora of variations that were available as early as 1530. They were far plainer and shorter than their modern variations. They were hardy and well adapted to the harsh weather of Central Asia. The colors were mostly red and they varied in shapes and sizes scattered about the valleys amongst the other vegetation. The first people to encounter the tulips would have been the nomadic ancestors of the Turks. After a long cold winter, the season’s first tulips represented spring, life and fertility. It was in this way that the tulip first became of some importance to the Turks.
The exact date of cultivation of the tulip is unknown but we can know that around the 10th and eleventh century A.D., when the Turks moved into the Middle East, there were already some tulips about, but only in the most extravagant of gardens around the empire. The flower’s “delicacy and blood red coloring made it a flower of great importance to the people of Persia” 1. A legend is told of how a prince named Farhad was so deeply in love with a maiden by the name of Shirin. One day he received word that his love had died. Gripped by anguish, the prince hacked open his body with an ax all the wile
Finance & Business Performance
November 2013
The Rise of the Tulip
Tulipomania refers to the hysteria that gripped the Netherlands during the end of 1636 and the beginning of 1637. This event is arguably the world's first recorded financial crisis. During the aptly called “mania” the tulip flower reached costs that were so exorbitant, men were paying the value of an entire estate for one single bulb of the captivating flower. In order to fully understand the phenomenon we must examine the lineage of the tulip and the time in which it reached such success.
The first tulips are said to have been wild flowers growing in the Valleys of Tien Shan where China and Tibet meet Russia and Afghanistan. These are ancestors of the tulips we know today and indeed of the plethora of variations that were available as early as 1530. They were far plainer and shorter than their modern variations. They were hardy and well adapted to the harsh weather of Central Asia. The colors were mostly red and they varied in shapes and sizes scattered about the valleys amongst the other vegetation. The first people to encounter the tulips would have been the nomadic ancestors of the Turks. After a long cold winter, the season’s first tulips represented spring, life and fertility. It was in this way that the tulip first became of some importance to the Turks.
The exact date of cultivation of the tulip is unknown but we can know that around the 10th and eleventh century A.D., when the Turks moved into the Middle East, there were already some tulips about, but only in the most extravagant of gardens around the empire. The flower’s “delicacy and blood red coloring made it a flower of great importance to the people of Persia” 1. A legend is told of how a prince named Farhad was so deeply in love with a maiden by the name of Shirin. One day he received word that his love had died. Gripped by anguish, the prince hacked open his body with an ax all the wile