Hail the Conquering Dutch! Part 1: Tulipmania

It seems only natural that when one thinks of flowers, ultimately, one must consider the Dutch. The Dutch East (and West) India Company dominated the world trade business in spices, fur, sugar, and coffee during the 17th and 18th centuries. Reaching out into the continent of Asia for colonization purposes, the company also extended themselves into the world of flowers, creating a market for flowers where one did not exist (at least in Europe). Most would consider the tulip the most well-known bulb that the Dutch have cultivated. It is widly believed that in 1593, a botanist by the name of Carolus Clusius arrived in Holland with bulbs of an unknown wildflower from Turkey and Persia: the tulip (Stewart 106).

Clusius began cataloguing tulips by color, bloom, size, and quickly tulips became all the rage in Holland, the most desired flower among gardeners and growers alike. Not only were they much desired, tulips would sometimes "break," (resulting from a virus which was not realized until the 19th century), which meant they might form stripes or produce feather tips. Because no one had anyway of knowing which bulbs would break, they were purchased for extremely high prices, escalating phenomenly in the 17th century, creating the frenzy we know today as tulipmania. At auction, tulip merchants would continually outbid one another, knowing they could simply sell their bulbs the next day for a higher price. A single-priced tulip bulb could sell at auction for the price of a Dutch canal house. In 1637, the tulip market crashed at the Dutch auction, with tulips becoming worth less than 5% of their original price, culminating in widespread bankruptcies for anyone who had invested (Stewart 109). After tulipmania, the price of one bulb decreased from about 1,250 gilders to a much more reasonable 1 gilder, allowing the Dutch to continue dominating the flower market with their tulips.

*Field tulips from Holland are available late January- early-May of each year.

Stewart, Amy. Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2007.