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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe Dutch Republic Started the Tulip Craze<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The context in which this would occur is essential. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was the most advanced economy in Europe. This was primarily based on its dominance of the carrying trade of the North Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For instance, if goods arrived in a port in Western Europe from Sweden, Finland, or the region lying along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, it was almost sure that they had arrived on a Dutch ship. The largest company in the world (and all of human history) was the Dutch East India Company.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This mercantile power allowed cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam to flourish and what is known as the Dutch Golden Age, a blossoming of Late Renaissance art into the Baroque, to occur in what was otherwise a relatively small corner of the European continent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, so significant was the Republic\u2019s economy that economic historians, generally speaking, identify modern capitalism as having emerged in the cities of Amsterdam, London and Antwerp right around the time the tulip mania took hold.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tulips were introduced into the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic around 1593 by the French-born botanist Carolus Clusius, the leading scientific horticulturist of the late sixteenth century, who had taken up a position at the University of Leiden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clusius first determined that this bulb from Central Asia could grow quite well in the relatively temperate climate of Northern Europe. And soon, they became popular amongst the upper and middle classes, who developed an affinity for decorating their homes with them as Dutch society entered a period of increasing prosperity in the early seventeenth century.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tulips come in many different colors and can be multi-colored also. Moreover, they are highly cultivatable, and different colors and hues can be produced by those who know how to do so, although this process can take years to achieve.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, as tulips became increasingly fashionable, there was increasing competition amongst the Dutch upper class to have the most unique and unusual tulips in their homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As this occurred, the price of tulip bulbs began to increase, and this was only compounded when merchants and growers also began to fork out ever-larger sums of money for bulbs of a certain quality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This might have just remained an inflated market, but in the mid-1630s, it turned into the world\u2019s first massive economic bubble as speculation on the more prized bubbles became truly enormous. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Introduction of Tulips in the Dutch Republic<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The Bubble Reaches Its Peak<\/h2>\n\n\n\n