There Never Was a Real Tulip Fever

A new movie sets its doomed entrepreneurs amidst 17th-century “tulipmania”—but historians of the phenomenon have their own bubble to burst

The Tulip Folly (Wikimedia Commons)

By Lorraine Boissoneault

SMITHSONIAN.COM
SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

When tulips came to the Netherlands, all the world went mad. A sailor who mistook a rare tulip bulb for an onion and ate it with his herring sandwich was charged with a felony and thrown in prison. A bulb named Semper Augustus, notable for its flame-like white and red petals, sold for more than the cost of a mansion in a fashionable Amsterdam neighborhood, complete with coach and garden. As the tulip market grew, speculation exploded, with traders offering exorbitant prices for bulbs that had yet to flower. And then, as any financial bubble will do, the tulip market imploded, sending traders of all incomes into ruin.

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/

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