The Dutch Tulip Mania: Bubble or Myth?

Episode 23 of The Story of the Netherlands pulls back the gable of tulip mania, the 1630s craze that saw single bulbs trade for ten times a craftsman's annual income. Lucas and Luna reexamine the familiar story: were speculators really trading houses for 'Semper Augustus'? Or did later moralists exaggerate the frenzy? They explore how tulips arrived from the Ottoman Empire via Carolus Clusius at Leiden's Hortus Botanicus, the role of futures contracts and 'wind trade', and why the crash of February 1637 left no economic depression in its wake. Along the way, they meet the bubonic plague that coincided with the boom, the weavers and brewers who gambled on flowers, and the pamphlet wars that cemented the legend. Drawing on recent research by Anne Goldgar and others, they separate market reality from moral panic—and ask what tulip mania tells us about Dutch Golden Age capitalism, risk, and the stories we tell about bubbles. #TulipMania #DutchGoldenAge #CarolusClusius #SemperAugustus #HortusBotanicus #Speculation #EconomicBubble #FuturesContracts #Windhandel #AnneGoldgar #Leiden #Haarlem #Amsterdam #OttomanTulips #FinancialHistory #Netherlands #History #FexingoHistory #DutchHistory #GoldenAge Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo