The Great Commodity Crash of 1637

Fortunes were doubled in the blink of an eye. Poor men became rich, and rich men became filthy rich -- without doing a day's work. In the wildly speculative marketplace, even the threat of government crackdowns couldn't halt the illegal trading of the hottest commodity in 17th century Holland -- tulip bulbs.

Originally a wild flower tamed by the Turks, cultivated tulips came to Holland by way of Carolus Clusius, director of the Royal Medicinal Garden in Vienna, who successfully raised the first European tulips during the 16th century. He fled to Holland for religious sanctuary, where he became director of the botanical garden at the University of Leiden. He took his tulip bulbs with him. Both thrived in the Dutch climate and an industry was born.

1630s: When Holland Was Bullish on Bulbs

By the 17th century, horticultural experimenting created many new breeds of tulips. Available only to the rich, these exotic and expensive mutations were coveted for their beauty, rarity and -- status. When the middle classes began to realize how much money the upper classes spent on tulip bulbs -- and how much money they made selling them -- they sensed a "fool-proof" get-rich-quick opportunity. Thus "Tulipmania" was born. Bulbs were sold by weight, usually while they were still in the ground. All one had to do to become rich was to plant them and wait. The buying and selling of a product as invisible as un-sprouted flowers came to be called the "wind trade."

Traders could earn as much as 60,000 florins (today approx. $44,000) in a month -- not a bad commission even by 20th century standards. People were desperate to cash in on the bulb-trading frenzy! Small businesses were sold and family jewels were traded.

Local governments tried unsuccessfully to outlaw this commerce. But like any profit boom, trade was legislated by economics, not government.

The bottom fell out of the market during 1637, when a gathering of bulb merchants could not get the usual inflated prices for their bulbs. Word quickly spread, and the market crashed.

Thousands of Dutch businessmen, many among the country's leading economic powerbrokers, were ruined in less than two months' time -- extremely rapid deployment of bad news for 1637!

The Narcissus Myth

Most Americans know narcissi as daffodils, though in the South they are traditionally called jonquils. In actual fact, all daffodils and jonquils are narcissi — but only some narcissi are daffodils and only a few are jonquils. But that's another story. What matters is that all are extremely beautiful and that has a bearing on how the Greeks thought these lovely flowers came to be.

According to Greek myth, a nubile young wood nymph named Echo spied young Narcissus walking in the woods. Narcissus was blessed with an indescribable beauty bestowed upon him by the gods. His gift came with one caveat: his beauty and youth would never fade, provided he never looked upon his own reflection. Poor Echo fell hopelessly in love with Narcissus. He, the self-absorbed brute, did not return her interest. She loved so deeply, and pined for him so strongly, that she was literally consumed by love, until all that was left of her was her voice. The goddess Nemesis decided to get even. She led the vain and unsuspecting young man to a shimmering lake. There, dazzled by his own reflected beauty, he was unable to turn away. Hopelessly in love with himself, he too was consumed by passion and faded away.

The gods, however, thinking that Nemesis might have played a bit rough, decided to commute his sentence to eternity as a flower. In the language of flowers, the narcissus stands for vanity and egoism. In psychoanalysis, narcissism is, of course, excessive self-love.