The Tulipmania Legend

Download or read book Tulipmania written by Anne Goldgar and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1630s the Netherlands was gripped by tulipmania: a speculative fever unprecedented in scale and, as popular history would have it, folly. We all know the outline of the story—how otherwise sensible merchants, nobles, and artisans spent all they had (and much that they didn’t) on tulip bulbs. We have heard how these bulbs changed hands hundreds of times in a single day, and how some bulbs, sold and resold for thousands of guilders, never even existed. Tulipmania is seen as an example of the gullibility of crowds and the dangers of financial speculation. But it wasn’t like that. As Anne Goldgar reveals in Tulipmania, not one of these stories is true. Making use of extensive archival research, she lays waste to the legends, revealing that while the 1630s did see a speculative bubble in tulip prices, neither the height of the bubble nor its bursting were anywhere near as dramatic as we tend to think. By clearing away the accumulated myths, Goldgar is able to show us instead the far more interesting reality: the ways in which tulipmania reflected deep anxieties about the transformation of Dutch society in the Golden Age. “Goldgar tells us at the start of her excellent debunking book: ‘Most of what we have heard of [tulipmania] is not true.’. . . She tells a new story.”—Simon Kuper, Financial Times

Download or read book The Tulipmania Legend written by Peter M. Garber and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Famous First Bubbles written by Peter M. Garber and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2001-08-24 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The jargon of economics and finance contains numerous colorful terms for market-asset prices at odds with any reasonable economic explanation. Examples include "bubble," "tulipmania," "chain letter," "Ponzi scheme," "panic," "crash," "herding," and "irrational exuberance." Although such a term suggests that an event is inexplicably crowd-driven, what it really means, claims Peter Garber, is that we have grasped a near-empty explanation rather than expend the effort to understand the event. In this book Garber offers market-fundamental explanations for the three most famous bubbles: the Dutch Tulipmania (1634-1637), the Mississippi Bubble (1719-1720), and the closely connected South Sea Bubble (1720). He focuses most closely on the Tulipmania because it is the event that most modern observers view as clearly crazy. Comparing the pattern of price declines for initially rare eighteenth-century bulbs to that of seventeenth-century bulbs, he concludes that the extremely high prices for rare bulbs and their rapid decline reflects normal pricing behavior. In the cases of the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles, he describes the asset markets and financial manipulations involved in these episodes and casts them as market fundamentals.

Download or read book The Tulip written by Anna Pavord and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revised and updated edition of the internationally bestselling classic Anna Pavord's now classic, internationally bestselling sensation, The Tulip, is not a gardening book. It is the story of a flower that has driven men mad. Greed, desire, anguish and devotion have all played their part in the development of the tulip from a wild flower of the Asian steppes to the worldwide phenomenon it is today. No other flower carries so much baggage; it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour, mirrors economic booms and busts, plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution. Why did the tulip dominate so many lives through so many centuries in so many countries? Anna Pavord, a self-confessed tulipomaniac, spent six years looking for answers, roaming through eastern Turkey and Central Asia to tell how a humble wild flower made its way along the Silk Road and eventually took the whole of Western Europe by storm. Sumptuously illustrated from a wide range of sources, this irresistible volume has become a bible, a unique source book, a universal gift and a joy to all who possess it. This beautifully redesigned edition features a new Preface by the author, a revised listing of the best varieties of this incomparable flower to choose for your garden and a reorganised listing of tulip species to reflect the latest thinking by taxonomists.

Download or read book Tulip Mania written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading If one were to glide over the Dutch countryside via helicopter in the springtime, the beauty below them would seem almost surreal. The rolling rectangular fields are composed of immaculately neat, horizontal stripes in vibrant swatches of scarlet, pink, lavender, cream-white, and midnight-blue. The ethereal sight is even more breathtaking when one takes a stroll along these fields, surrounded by endless carpets of bright color. These world-famous three-petal, three-sepal flowers, all craning their necks towards the dazzling sun, are none other than Dutch tulips. The Netherlands is now the world's leading commercial producer of tulips, shipping out more than 3 billion of these colorful beauties each year. Standard tulips, depending on where one is based, typically sell for anywhere between $1.00 to $3.50 USD per stem today. They are a creative alternative to roses, lilies, and other traditional flowers. Needless to say, like every other floral breed, special tulips - such as hybrids, or ones with unique, multi-colored streaks and patterns - will cost buyers a pretty penny, but a bouquet is certainly not going to break the bank. Legend has it, however, that this was not always the case. As a matter of fact, these delightful "harbingers of spring" were supposedly once so rabidly sought-after that it wasn't just more valuable than gold - men threw themselves into financial ruin all for the sake of attaining just one of these sacred flowers. At the crescendo of what is now remembered as "Tulip Mania," or the "Tulip Craze," a single, shallot-like bulb of an unripe tulip was worth 20 times the annual salary of a skilled laborer. This aggressively volatile period, marked by convoluted and careless market speculation, inevitably culminated in the disastrous bursting of one of the world's first financial bubbles, an example of the perils of herd mentality. But how much truth is there to this oft-repeated story of the Tulpenmanie, really? Tulip Mania: The History and Legacy of the World's First Speculative Bubble during the Dutch Golden Age analyzes the legendary mania, and whether it was as dramatic as portrayed. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Tulip Mania like never before.

Download or read book Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money written by and published by Ludwig von Mises Institute. This book was released on 2009-03-16 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Housing Bubble was hardly the first in human history. What's eluded historians is the same issue that eludes commentators today: the underlying cause of bubbles. This book is the first (and only) book to solve the mystery of the most famous bubble in world history: Tulipmania in 17th century Netherlands. It Is a legendary event but explanations have been lacking. People blame irrational exuberance, free markets, and an unleashed aristocracy. Douglas French takes a different route: he follows the money to prove that the bubble resulted from a government intervention that dramatically exploded the money supply and fueled the tulip-price bubble – not altogether different from modern bubbles. This book was French’s Master’s thesis written under the direction of Murray Rothbard and examining three of the most famous speculative bubble episodes in history through the lens of Austrian Business Cycle Theory. Although each of these episodes is well documented, this book examines the monetary interventions that engendered each of these events showing that not only the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble were caused by government meddling, but Tulipmania was as well. Tulipmania was unique in that it was the sound money policy of the Dutch combined with free coinage laws that led to an acute increase in the supply of money and fostered an atmosphere that was ripe for speculation and malinvestment, manifesting itself in the intense trading of tulip bulbs. The author examines not only the Mississippi Bubble but also the life and monetary theories of its architect, John Law. Professor Joe Salerno calls Law the world’s first macroeconomist who implemented a Keynesian monetary system in France nearly two hundred years before Keynes was born. At the same time across the English Channel, a nearly bankrupt British government looked on with envy at Law’s system, believing that he was working a financial miracle. It was anything but this and investors in both countries were devastated. Although these episodes occurred centuries ago, readers will find the events eerily similar to today’s bubbles and busts: low interest rates, easy credit terms, widespread public participation, bankrupt governments, price inflation, frantic attempts by government to keep the booms going, and government bailouts of companies after the crash. When will we learn? We first have to get cause and effect in history straight. This book is an excellent contribution to that effort.

Download or read book The Netherlands in a Nutshell written by Frits van Oostrom and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vijftig tijdperken, gebeurtenissen en personen die bepalend zijn geweest voor het beeld van de geschiedenis van Nederland vanaf de vroegste tijden tot heden.