What Was the Dutch Tulip Bulb Market Bubble?
The Dutch tulip bulb market bubble, also known as tulipmania, was one of the most famous market bubbles and crashes of all time. Itoccurred in Holland during the early to mid-1600s,when speculation drove the value of tulip bulbs to extremes. At the market’s peak, the rarest tulip bulbs traded for as much as six times the average person’s annual salary.
Today, the story of tulipmania serves as a parable for the pitfalls that excessive greed and speculation in investing can lead to.
Key Takeaways
- The Dutch tulip bulb market bubble was one of the most famous asset bubbles and crashes of all time.
- At the height of the bubble, tulips sold for approximately 10,000 guilders, equal to the value of a mansion on the Amsterdam Grand Canal.
- Tulips were introduced to Holland in 1593, with the bubble occurring primarily from 1634 to 1637.
- Recent scholarship has questioned the true extent of the tulipmania, suggesting it may have been greatly exaggerated as a parable of greed and excess.
History of the Dutch Tulip Bulb Market’s Bubble
Tulips first appeared in Europe in the 16th century, arriving via the spice trading routes that lent a sense of exoticism to these imported flowers that looked like no other flower native to the continent. It is no surprise, then, that tulips became a luxury item destined for the gardens of the affluent. According to The Library of Economics and Liberty, “it was deemed a proof of bad taste in any man of fortune to be without a collection of [tulips].”
Following the affluent, the merchant middle classes of Dutch society (which did not exist in such a developed form elsewhere in Europe at the time) sought to emulate their wealthier neighbors and also demanded tulips. Initially, it was a status item that was purchased for the sole reason that it was expensive.
But at the same time, tulips were known to be notoriously fragile, and would die without careful cultivation. In the early 1600s, professional cultivators of tulips began to refine techniques to grow and produce the flowers locally in Holland, establishing a flourishing business sector that has persisted to this day.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, the Dutch learned thattulips could grow from seeds or buds that grew on the mother bulb. Abulb that grewfrom seed would take seven to 12 years before flowering, but a bulb itself could flower the very next year. So-called broken bulbs were a type of tulip with a striped, multicolored pattern rather than a single solid color that evolved from a mosaic virus strain. This variation was a catalyst for growing demand for rare, “broken bulb” tulips, which ultimately led to the high market price.
Tulips Sweep Holland
In 1634, tulipmania swept through Holland. The Library of Economics and Liberty writes, “The rage among the Dutch to possess [tulip bulbs] was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected, and the population, even to its lowest dregs, embarked in the tulip trade.”
A single bulb could be worth as much as 4,000 or even 5,500florins. Because 1630s florins were gold coins of uncertain weight and quality, it is hard to make an accurate estimation of today’s value in dollars, but Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, in his famous 1841 book Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, does give us some points of reference: Among other things, 4 tunsof beer cost 32 florins. That’s around 1,008 gallons of beer, or 65 kegs of beer. A keg of Coors Light costs around $120, so 4 tuns of beer ≈ $7,800 and 1 florin ≈ $244. This means that the best of tulips cost upwards of $1 million in today’s money (but with many bulbs trading in the $50,000–$150,000 range). By 1636, the demand for the tulip trade was so large that regular marts for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, Haarlem, and other towns.
It was at that time that professional traders (stock jobbers) got in on the action, and everybody appeared to be making money simply by possessing some of these rare bulbs. Indeed, it seemed at the time that the price could only go up, that “the passion for tulips would last forever.”
A large part of this rapid decline was driven by the fact that people had purchased bulbs on credit, hoping to repay their loans when they sold their bulbs for a profit. But once prices started to drop, holders were forced to sell their bulbs at any price and to declare bankruptcy in the process.
People began buying tulips with leverage, using margined derivatives contracts to buy more than they could afford. But as quickly as the run-up began, confidence was dashed. By the end of 1637, prices began to fall and never recovered.
The Bubble Bursts
By the end of 1637, the bubble had burst. Buyers announced that they could not pay the high price previously agreed upon for bulbs, and the market fellapart. While it was not a devastating occurrence for the nation’s economy, it didunderminesocial expectations. The event destroyed relationships built on trust and people’s willingness and ability to pay.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Dutch Calvinists painted an exaggeratedscene of economic ruin because theyworried that the tulip-drivenconsumerism boom would lead to societal decay. They insisted that such great wealth was ungodly, and the belief remains tothis day.
Real-World Examples of Extreme Buying
The obsession with tulips has captured the public’s imagination for generations and has been the subject of several books, including a novel called Tulip Fever by DeborahMoggach. According to popular legend, the tulip craze took hold of all levels of Dutch society in the 1630s. Mackay wrote that“the wealthiest merchants to the poorest chimney sweeps jumped into the tulip fray, buying bulbs at high prices and selling them for even more.”
Tulipmania is a model for the general cycle of a financial bubble:
- Investors lose track of rational expectations.
- Psychological biases lead to a massive upswing in the price of an asset or sector.
- A positive-feedback cycle continues to inflate prices.
- Investors realize that they are holding an irrationally priced asset.
- Prices collapse due to a massive sell-off, and an overwhelming majority go bankrupt.
Similar cycles have been observed in the price of Beanie Babies, baseball cards, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and shipping stocks.
Dutch speculators at the time spent incredible amounts of money on bulbs that only produced flowers for a week—many companies formed with the sole purpose of trading tulips. However, the trade reached its fever pitch in the late 1630s.
In the 1600s, the Dutch currency was the guilder, which preceded the use of the euro. At the height of the bubble, tulips sold for approximately 10,000 guilders. In the 1630s, a price of 10,000 guilders equated roughly to the value of a mansion on the Amsterdam Grand Canal.
Did the Dutch Tulipmania Really Exist?
In 1841, Mackay published his classic analysis, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.Among other phenomena, Mackay (who never lived in or even visited Holland) documents several prominent asset-price bubbles—the Mississippi Scheme and the South Sea Bubble, as well as the tulipmania of the 1600s. It is through Mackay’s short chapter on the subject that the event became popularized as the paradigm for an asset bubble.
Because of the timing of tulip cultivation, there was always a few years of lag between demand pressures and supply.Under normal conditions, this wasn’t an issue, as future consumption was contracted for a year or more in advance. But when the 1630s rise in prices occurred so rapidly and after bulbs already were planted for the year, growers would not have had an opportunity to increase production in response to price. Earl Thompson, an economist, has actually determined that because of this sort of production lag and the fact that growers entered into legal contracts to sell their tulips at a later date (similar to futures contracts), which were rigorously enforced by the Dutch government, prices rose for the simple fact that suppliers couldn’t satisfy all the demand. Indeed, actual sales of new tulip bulbs remained at ordinary levels throughout the period.
Using data about the specific payoffs present in the contracts, Thompson argued that “tulip bulb contract prices hewed closely to what a rational economic model would dictate ... Tulip contract prices before, during, and after the ‘tulipmania’ appear to provide a remarkable illustration of ‘market efficiency.’” Indeed, by 1638, tulip production had risen to match the earlier demand, which had already waned by then, creating an oversupply in the market and further depressing prices.
Economist Earl Thompson, who has studied tulipmania, concluded that the “mania” was actually a rational response to demands arising from contractual obligations.
Anne Goldgar, historian at King’s College London, has also written extensively about tulipmania and agrees with Thompson, casting doubt on its “bubbleness.” Goldgar argues that although tulipmania may not have constituted an economic or speculative bubble, it was nonetheless traumatic to the Dutch for other reasons. “Even though the financial crisis affected very few, the shock of tulipmania was considerable,” she writes.
In fact, Goldgar goes on to argue that the “tulip bubble” was not at all a mania (although a few people did pay very high prices for a few very rare bulbs, and a few people did lose a lot of money as well). Instead, the story has been incorporated into the public discourse as a moral lesson: that greed is bad and chasing prices can be dangerous.
What is tulipmania?
Tulipmania is the story of a major commodity bubble, which took place in the 17th century as Dutch investors began to madly purchase tulips, pushing their prices to unprecedented highs.
What does tulipmania have to do with market bubbles?
Tulipmania reflects the general cycle of a bubble, from the irrational biases and group mentalities that push up prices of an asset to an unsustainable level, to the eventual collapse of those inflated prices. The example of tulipmania is now used as a parable for other speculative assets, such as cryptocurrencies or dotcom stocks.
How did tulipmania affect the Dutch economy?
While tulipmania and its ultimate crash didn’t damage the Dutch economy as journalist Charles Mackay wrote, there still was some collateral damage. From court records, historian Anne Goldgar found evidence of reputations lost and relationships broken when buyers who promised to pay 100 or 1,000 guilders for a tulip refused to pay up. The author said those defaults caused a certain level of “cultural shock” in an economy based on trade and extensive credit relationships.
How does tulipmania relate to bitcoin?
The bitcoin market is frequently compared with tulipmania, in that both prompted highly speculative prices for a product with little clear utility. Bitcoin prices tend to crash after significant gains, exhibiting many signs of a classic bubble.
The Bottom Line
The Dutch tulipmania of the 1600s is often cited as an example of greed, excess, and financial mania, with the prices of flower bulbs reaching extraordinary heights not backed by fundamentals, but by the fear of missing out and crowd psychology. However, recent analyses question whether the tulipmania was actually the widespread financial crisis that is referenced today in relation to other bubbles like dotcom stocks prior to 2001, the subprime housing market prior to 2008, or the cyrpto market prior to 2022. Indeed, these scholars suggest that the idea of tulipmania has been greatly exaggerated as a parable or lesson in taming greed and excess. The actual extent and severity of the tulip bulb bubble and crash was, in reality, far smaller than we have been led to believe.
