The choicest blooms were so costly, even he couldn’t afford to fill his garden. One fabulously wealthy Dutch politician built a garden filled with artfully positioned mirrors so that a few rare tulips were mirror-multiplied into a multitude. And the more that rich Dutch merchants tried to get the rarest blooms, the more expensive they became. They were no different from today’s influencers brandishing Birkin handbags or Bored Ape NFT digital artwork, except they splashed the cash on rare tulips. Newly wealthy Dutch merchants began to do what wealthy classes of people often do: they paid a lot of money for rare and beautiful things they could show off to their friends. And some, infected by a virus, changed from simple bold-coloured petals to exquisitely varied patterns. On at least one occasion, someone roasted some bulbs with oil and vinegar, which is the germ of truth in Mackay’s preposterous tale.īut tulips, of course, are much nicer to look at than to eat. Tulip bulbs were sufficiently unfamiliar to be mistaken for vegetables. Over the preceding decades, a thrilling range of new plants arrived in Europe, such as potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, French beans, runner beans and, of course, tulips. Nobody is denying that the Dutch became very excited about tulips in the 1630s. ![]() The picture Mackay paints, writes Goldgar, is “based almost solely on propaganda, cited as if it were fact”. Anne Goldgar, a historian, explains that Mackay’s account is plagiarised from an earlier source, which, in turn, relied on moralising pamphlets, written to discredit financial speculators. Who leaves a treasure casually lying around on a shop counter, or anywhere else? Indeed, the first thing I learnt as I explored the tulip bubble is that Mackay was wrong about most of it. That delightful story about the hungry sailor? It’s not true. And I wondered: could I understand the crazy financial markets of today, by following Charles Mackay as a guide into the past? I learnt much more than I could have hoped, but not the lessons that Mackay had intended to teach me. A lot of it seems to make no sense, just as the world Mackay described, in which you might accidentally eat a million dollars as garnish, made no sense. I’ve long been fascinated by Mackay’s stories, especially today, as we seem surrounded by things which might or might not be bubbles - NFTs, meme stocks, a precarious stock market - and full-blown financial face plants such as the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. For a brief moment of tulip mania, a Semper Augustus tulip bulb was worth far more than its weight in gold.Īnd it is thanks to Mackay that tulip mania is so famous. Relative to the wages of the time, that is well over a million dollars today. “Hardly was his back turned when the merchant missed his valuable Semper Augustus, worth three thousand florins, or about 280 pounds sterling,” wrote Mackay. Which was a problem because, in 1637, one of the strangest of all financial booms was taking place: the tulip mania, during which the choicest bulbs went for astonishing sums. In the book, Mackay went on to explain that the sailor, seeking zest for his fish, unwittingly pilfered not an onion, but a rare tulip bulb. But it was the three chapters on economic bubbles that made him the enduring guru of the phenomenon, cited to this day. Mackay debunked everything from alchemy and crusades to haunted houses and religious cults. ![]() It’s one of very few works of economic history to have been an enduring bestseller, from its first publication in 1841 through to the 21st century, thanks, largely, to its vivid storytelling. The Scottish writer was Charles Mackay and the story is recounted in his book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. “He got clear off with his prize and proceeded to the quay to eat his breakfast.” “Thinking it, no doubt, very much out of its place among silks and velvets, he slily seized an opportunity and slipped it into his pocket, as a relish for his herring,” according to a Scottish writer telling the tale two centuries later. The sailor noticed an onion lying on the counter. One winter morning in early 1637, a sailor presented himself at the counting-house of a wealthy Dutch merchant and was offered a hearty breakfast of fine red herring.
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