TULIPOMANIA - The story of the world's most coveted flower and the extraordinary passions it aroused

When economists need to summon an age of unchecked speculation and financial fecklessness, the Dutch tulip mania is at the top of the list. If you’re not familiar with the story, it’s an early example of the vagaries of the stock market.  In the mid-1630s, the Dutch fell in love with tulips. The flower became a status symbol, and the Dutch were all but tripping over each other in a race to conspicuously consume. To satisfy burgeoning demand, speculators began to trade in what were essentially tulip futures; these grew outlandishly complicated and expensive, and on the third of February, 1637, the tulip market collapsed.

The book begins with a history of the origins and cultivation of the tulip in the Ottoman Empire and how it came to be introduced in the Netherlands by botanist Carolus Clusius, who established an extensive garden at the University of Leiden. 

The demand for tulips of a rare species increased so much in the year 1636, that regular markets for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, Harlaem, Leyden, Alkmar, Hoorn, and other towns.   The tulip-jobbers speculated in the rise and fall of the tulip stocks.  People of all grades converted their property into cash, and invested it in flowers. Houses and lands were offered for sale at ruinously low prices, or assigned in payment of bargains made at the tulip-mart.

This book was an interesting story of botany and greed and what can happen when the latter triumphs.