Tulip mania (
Dutch:
tulpenmanie) was a period during the
Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some
bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable
tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. The major acceleration started in 1634 and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637.
It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history.[2] In many ways, the tulip mania was more of a then-unknown
socio-economic phenomenon than a significant
economic crisis. It had no critical influence on the prosperity of the
Dutch Republic, which was one of the world's
leading economic and
financial powers in the 17th century, with the highest
per capita income in the world from about 1600 to about 1720.
[3][4] The term tulip mania is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values.[5][6]
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