Originally cultivated in the Ottoman Empire, or modern day Turkey, the tulip is a flower whose delicate beauty, aesthetic symmetry, and colorful variety has allowed it to become the focal point of a flora-oriented craze denoted Tulipomania. After renowned botanist Carolus Clusius introduced the flowers to the Netherlands, the tulip suddenly became a source of rapidly acquired fortune that indicated the status of a wealthy European aristocrat. Prized for their seemingly never-ending variety, tulips were carefully cultivated to develop the most stunningly rare patterns and color combinations, with striped tulips becoming the most prized. When it was eventually discovered that the infinite variety of the tulips were due to numerous genetic mutations that could induce entirely new assortments of colors and patterns when appropriately paired, the tulip economy exploded, with the most expensive bulbs amounting to $30,000 each at the tulip industry's peak in 1634. Money wasn't the only form of payment used; a brewer exchanged his entire brewery for a single bulb, while it was common for prospective buyers to offer entire swaths of land or dozens of oxen for the price of a single tulip bulb. Everyone wanted the status and wealth that the innocent tulip promised.
In 1637, the flower that had once garnered astronomical sums of money instead became the source of an entire country's downfall. Fearful of the drastically increasing prices, a number of influential tulip traders lost interest in the industry and sold their carefully cultivated flowers on the market en masse. Prices dramatically dropped, and suddenly, the once fashionable trademark of status and wealth became anathema as Holland's economy collapsed. Those who had relied on the magnificent flower for their livelihood were trapped; some fled, desperate to avoid imminent bankruptcy, while others committed suicide. After the Tulipomania in Holland died down, a similar tulip craze began, ironically, at the source of the flowers; Turkey was soon plunged into an identical "tulip epoch". In the American Industrial Revolution, tulips became a dual source of wealth and beauty in a changing, unpredictable world.
Tulipomania! This is a great topic. Could you tell us something about your thoughts about the relevance to our modern world? Do you think we are still capable to falling into this kind of craze today? Perhaps the dot com bubble of the late '90s when a website that sold dog toys became one of the most valuable companies in the country? What does this period of history tell us about our modern world?
ReplyDeleteI love your idea of doing a post on the traumatic history of the tulip. It's so interesting that a flower could run a country's economy. I wonder what kind of strange objects impact our economy today...I had no idea about this sort of thing and it's great that you found such a cool topic.
ReplyDeleteI do find it particularly fascinating not just how obsessed people got with tulips in the Economy of something, but how much Tulips really depend on humans now. Without human influence, Tulips would be nowhere near as successful, and might have even died out long ago. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt's so interesting how human beings assign value to these random objects but it's also very dangerous, as shown by the Dutch economic crash. I think gold and silver are similar to these tulips. When you think about it, they are just rocks. Humans assign value to them just because they are "pretty."
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