Started by Frida Nyström (@frida_forages) ·
tulip mania probably wasn't that manic
Grew up hearing tulips were the original bubble. Turns out the historians who went back to the archives found a lot less ruin than the story says.
6 sources · 34 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- Did people really go broke over tulips?
- Ended at
- “tulip mania exaggerated goldgar”
The Trail
- “was tulip mania actually real” (google.com)
- Tulip mania (en.wikipedia.org)
- Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (en.wikipedia.org)
1841. most of the famous anecdotes come from here, and Mackay was leaning on moralizing pamphlets from the 1630s
- Charles Mackay (author) (en.wikipedia.org)
- Tulip breaking virus (en.wikipedia.org)
the flame-streaked tulips everyone wanted were literally sick
- “tulip mania exaggerated goldgar” (reddit.com)
What I came away with
Prices for rare bulbs really did spike and crash in early 1637, but much of the trading was in contracts that often just weren't honored, and historian Anne Goldgar couldn't find anyone actually bankrupted by it. Most of the drama comes from Mackay's 1841 book, which leaned on moralizing pamphlets written after the crash.
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