Tulip Mania: History's First Market Crash (1637) | Empire of Money

In February 1637, a single tulip bulb in Holland reportedly sold for 10,000 guilders — roughly six Rembrandts, or a street of houses. Within days, the market collapsed. This is the story of tulip mania, the first great financial bubble in history: how a flower from the Ottoman Empire became the ultimate status symbol of the Dutch Golden Age, how the legendary Semper Augustus commanded a fortune, and how tavern traders invented futures contracts three centuries before Wall Street. We trace the winter of 1636–37, when prices went vertical — Gheele Croonen from 20 to 1,200 guilders in months — to the silent auction in Haarlem where the bids stopped coming, and the famous Alkmaar auction of February 5, 1637, where 90,000 guilders changed hands even as the market died. But the most famous version of this story, told by Charles Mackay in 1841, may be largely myth. Modern historian Anne Goldgar's archival research reveals a smaller, quieter truth: few were truly ruined, and the Dutch economy barely noticed. A documentary about speculation, storytelling, and why every bubble — from railways to crypto — gets compared to a 400-year-old flower. Chapters: 00:00 — Chapter 1: A Flower Worth a House 02:32 — Chapter 2: The Sultan's Flower 05:25 — Chapter 3: The King of Tulips 08:52 — Chapter 4: The Tavern Exchange 12:02 — Chapter 5: The Crash 14:33 — Chapter 6: The Reckoning 17:18 — Chapter 7: The Myth and the Lesson #TulipMania #FinancialHistory #StockMarketCrash #EconomicHistory #DutchGoldenAge #Investing #Bubble #WallStreet #HistoryDocumentary #SemperAugustus #1637 #EmpireOfMoney