How Tulip Mania Worked

A funny thing happened to the Dutch during the 17th century: They went nuts for tulips, paying exorbitant amounts for a single bulb. But what exactly triggered this commodity bubble? And what do revisionist historians have to say? Tune in and find out.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm fair Dowdy and I'm to Bling Choker Boarding, and
we're going to start off today's episode with a little story,
a legend, and it's about a merchant in seventeenth century

(00:24):
Holland and he greets one of his ships is just
arrived from abroad, and he gives a sailor on board
a herring for lunch, very generous of him. And the
sailor is looking for a little something to eat with
his harring, a little side dish, looking around the ship,
and he finds some root like vegetables on board, and

(00:45):
he thinks they're onions, so he cuts them up and
he fries them with some oil and vinegar or some
sort of condiments to to make them tasty, and he
eats them with his fish. And through this sailor's innocent mistake,
the merchant ends up losing more on the meal than
he would have if he had bought the prince himself

(01:07):
the finest feast in the land. Um. So you'll you've
probably heard this story before, and you'll find it rehashed
and retold in tons of sources and articles that you
might read in your favorite business journal today, and it
really epitomizes the financial bubble that shook the seven century

(01:27):
Dutch Republic, which, as the story goes, rich and poor
people like speculated on tulip bulbs and um, they were
destroyed when ultimately the market dropped before the bulbs that
even bloomed. And almost since then, this little tale not
just the story of the bulbs mistake and his onions,

(01:49):
but this greater story has been an anecdote for business
writers to use as a cautionary tale as as something
to watch out for. Don't get too crazy see about
get rich quick schemes, or you might find yourselves like
the Dutch. Yeah, I know what you're eating. That's another aspect.
It was another left from learned. And one reason you'll

(02:09):
find that this Harrying Exotic onion side dish story and
print so frequently is because it really makes a nice
historical counterpart to current events. Um articles about the dot
com bubble, housing bubble, even a tiny bubble of beanie
babies that happened in the late nineties. So I'm proud
I was not part of that bubble. Yeah not It

(02:30):
was even I was probably a really at risk population
to be part of it, but I avoided it. And yeah,
it's just to give you an example though, of how
often this story is used by business writers. Um. I
found this particular version in The Economist. So I mean,
there you go, kind of one of the ultimates there. Um.
But we're gonna be talking about the tulip bubble or

(02:52):
tulip mania, it's called lots of different things, and try
to figure out why the bottom fell out, and also
sort of throw a ranch in the mix here and
talk about the revisionist history that's really changed the story
a lot in the past year, or at least gotten
a lot of people thinking. Um, but before we we

(03:13):
go into the trade as a whole, we've got to
discuss the history of the commodity itself. Tulips, which have
a pretty pretty interesting history. And let's say, for for
a flower that you that looks like an onion, potentially, yes,
they do. And writer Anna Pavard, who wrote just one
of the surprisingly large number of books on tulips that
have come out since, said that the tulip is a

(03:36):
flower that has carried more political, social, economic, religious, intellectual,
and cultural baggage than any other on earth, So put
that in your face. I know, I never knew. What
do you think of it? Um? But the tulip used
to just be another wildflower. Of course, it didn't start
with this history. It was one that grew in Turkey

(03:58):
and Central Asia, and there are still more than one
hundred species there today. I looked them up online. They're
really pretty. They don't look that much like I mean,
you can tell they're related, but they don't look that
much like the tulips that you might grow in your
garden today. They're they're sort of pointier and a little
more open with like buttercups or something rather than Holland

(04:20):
grown tulips. Sounds very nice. With the Ottomans, they brought
these bulbs into their courtyards and domesticated them, and they
were just obsessed, as the Dutch would become with these
flowers there. They like the long, narrow flowers with the
pointy petals, and they use them as a decorative motif
and things like embroidery and tiles. They even had a
special vase for one blossom. But by the mid fifteen hundreds,

(04:44):
tulips were brought to Europe by Ogier jes Land de Bozvek,
the ambassador for Ferdinand the First of Austria to Suleiman
the Magnificent. Yeah, and a little side note on this
ambassador here. Um we mentioned in the earlier episode on
Cinderella of the hare Um that's Leman sort of started
this tradition of not speaking to ambassadors presented at his court.

(05:06):
And so we can imagine that Ogier Jeslon definitely suffered
under this cold eye of Suleiman Um. At one point,
actually he more than suffered. At one point the Sultan
placed him under house arrest. He was eventually freed um.
And when he does come back to Austria, he brought

(05:26):
not only tulip seeds, not tulip bulbs. Tulip seeds which
take a really, really long time to turn them into tulips.
But he didn't just bring back those. He brought back
lilacs and and gora goats too, which I guess that's
why he didn't bring the bulbs. The goats probably took
a lot of room. Yeah, they sound like they'd be
pretty tough to transport. Holland Oh had to wait a

(05:48):
few more years for tulips. But in fife careless. Clusius,
who was the prefect of the Imperial herb Gardens in Vienna,
he brought some bulbs with him when he immigrated and
headed up to a new botanical gardens in Leiden. So
basically he was taking a new position and brought them along.
Um Inclusius he bred these tulips mostly for medicinal purposes,

(06:10):
but he considered them to be beautiful too, so dual
purpose there. Well. And I have one more thing to
add about the medicinal purposes. I'm not sure what these
medicinal purposes were because I looked into it, and UM, tulips,
especially their bulbs are filled with glycosides which are extremely toxic.

(06:30):
And according to the Nova Scotia Museum, during World War two, UM,
some starving Dutch cattle and people had to resort eating
bulbs and they would get quite sick from it. Um.
So y'all should actually all thank Delna for making me
go look up why Closius was using these for medicinal
purposes before I like accidentally recommended that tulips made good medicine.

(06:54):
And everybody ate the bulbs that they had just brought
from pikes or something. Stick to your pharmacuticus. That's our
official recommendation. But luckily uh Clusius here as I said,
he uh, he also loved the bulbs for their beauty,
and many other people did too. He really had a
hard time preventing the bulbs from being stolen out of
his garden. So the attraction begins. Yeah, it definitely begins

(07:19):
with his garden. Um, and presumably it's from these stolen
bulls and others hopefully purchased legitimately. Um that a trade
in tulips emerges, and the traders are called bloom Aston,
which means tulip traders. It also kind of means tulip
fanciers or tulip enthusiasts, which is something that you should

(07:42):
keep in mind when we get into the speculative nature
of this later story. Um. But yeah, I mean, basically,
the point is that these first traders love tulips to
They're not just in it for the money. They're collectors.
And this is a time when collecting things or your
curio is really really popular. When you would you'd add

(08:06):
up seashells and and things like that, interesting rocks and
minerals um and display them and it would show that
you were educated cultured person, so you had to have
a love for um, and you also had to have
some good faith to deal in tulips too. And here's why.
Traditionally the trade, the tulip trade was done in the summer.

(08:27):
Flowers bloomed in May or June, and after that the
bulb was dug up and it was kept too dry indoors.
The bulbs then had to be inspected and they were
sold just before they were replanted in September, so the
seller would deliver the bulb and the buyer would pay up. Yeah,
so the issue here is pretty apparent. It's that if
you're the buyer, you don't know exactly what you're getting.

(08:50):
You don't know if it's the same ball that one
that you contracted for. You don't know if it's the
bulb that you saw bloom and it looks so pretty
last spring, and you don't know fits the bulb that's
going to perform as well as the one you saw.
I mean, there's already going to be a little uncertainty
in any kind of horticultural pursuit. But there's the potential

(09:10):
for deception here too, which made people pretty nervous and
to make matters worse, bulbs bought in the ground didn't
always bloom as people expected them to, even if they
were the same, even if there wasn't some sort of
fraud happening. And that's partly because the most popular tulips
at the time we're called broken tulips and um. If

(09:34):
you if you look at an old water color or
painting of tulips, you're probably looking at broken tulips. They
have these feather flame pedals um on a light background,
so's something like red or purple as stripe going up
the middle of each petal, and the tulip would bloom
like a normal solid color tulip one year, and then

(09:56):
the next year it would bloom as this broken flower
up like a total surprise to everyone, it seemed, and
it's descendants, any any descendant from that bulb, would also
bloom splotched and broken. And so at the time people
didn't know why this happened. It seemed like pure chance,
but these were the tulips they wanted. Today we know

(10:18):
that ironically it's caused by a virus which is delivered
by aphids. And because the broken tulips were I mean,
I don't want to stay sick they're not they're not
unable to to thrive in a certain sense, but they
are a little bit weaker. Because they're weaker, the bulbs reproduced,

(10:40):
they didn't reproduce as fast as a good, unaffected, healthy
bulb should, and so it drove up the price. It
made these broken flowers even more valuable and more desirable.
And were you saying that, um, with the blotching us,
the splotching us on the pedal, you couldn't tell how
it would be splotched. Yeah, that chance too. So maybe

(11:01):
it was some ugly splatch he didn't like, or maybe
it was these perfect flames going up the middle of
the pedal. Um. So you didn't know what you were
going to get, even if you were dealing with someone
who is trustworthy. So the most expensive tool at the
time was Semper Augustus, which was a red and white
striped variety, and it went for a thousand florins, which

(11:22):
was six times the annual income of an average person
at that time. Yeah, but even as early as sixteen ten,
according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a single rare bulb made
an acceptable dowry and an entire brewery. And I like
I think the Encyclopedia mentioned specifically a thriving brewery in

(11:43):
France was sold for one bulb, one highly coveted bulbs.
So we see these examples of people getting pretty obsessed
with toolips early on. But it was in sixteen thirty four,
sixteen thirty five, depending on which source you look at,
that prices got really really high, and at that point
business started to change, and so instead of the system

(12:07):
Dablina described a minute ago where the bulbs were sold
in late summer when they were dug up, the bulbs
were now sold by weight while they were still in
the ground. Um, so this is fundamentally changing the process
of the tulip trade. Yeah, you may wonder how they
could even pull this off. Well, you what would happen

(12:28):
is you'd get the details of the bulb, what its
weight was at planting, it's expected weight comes September, but
that's it. There was no bulb, so it was actual
paper descriptions of the bulbs that were sold instead of
the bulbs themselves. So you imagine like getting this piece
of paper for something that you've paid money for. It's
kind of um, I mean imagine if you were buying

(12:49):
tulips now for your garden, and that was the deal
you got. You probably wouldn't be very happy with it.
Um and to to deal with this new system, this um,
this selling by weight system TOOLIP bulbs even got their
own unit of measure called the ozen I think also
called aces, where one of this unit equalled about zero

(13:12):
point zero zero one eight ounces, so super super tiny
units of measure as it would have to be. But
for the Bloomston there was money to be made even
if the price per ozin didn't change. As long as
your bulbs grew in the ground, your profits were going
to climb. So as demand continued to grow for these,
the offsets started to sell as well as mature bulbs,

(13:34):
which means offsets were basically they were bull bull bets. Yeah,
they were little bull bets. They took three to five
years to produce flowers of their own, so pretty risky venture. Yeah,
definitely more so than getting the pieces of paper instead
of your actual bulb. Well, because you're no longer even
buying a bulb that well, yeah, I saw that bull
bloom in May just this year. It's maybe fingers crossed

(13:57):
little blue bloom in three to five years UM so
a very risky business. And by six there's a futures
market too, where buyers would contract to buy an in
ground ball at a set price, gambling that it would eventually,
when it was finally dug up, it would be worth
more than the expected value. And UM contracts themselves were

(14:22):
bought and sold, and I think UM people who were
a little skeptical of this whole market called the whole
thing the wind trade, because you never knew which way
the wind would blow UM, and you ultimately had to
hope that there would be someone at the end who
would pay up when those bulbs came out of the ground.
That was what they were all gambling on. UM. To

(14:43):
make betters worse, buyers start buying without the money, so
they're buying on credit, and the sellers accept that because
they're gambling on the fact that the buyer himself will
probably be able to sell at a higher price eventually
as well, again all counting on that one person at
the end of the chain who's willing to pay out,

(15:05):
and the fact that the bulb actually turns out the
way it's planned. A lot of bets going on here.
So how high did this actually go? How much were
people actually spending on these bulbs. Well, there's some information
from seven floating around a nursery catalog, actually from a
Harlem florist, and it lists the name, weight and price
of a tulip viceroy for example. There were lists of

(15:26):
other tulips as well, but for this tulip viceroy, a
lightweight bulb sold for three thousand guilders. A heavy bulb
sold for four thousand, two hundred. So the low price
here was twenty times the annual salary of a skilled craftsman. Yeah,
and I mean again, we we need to point out
a few things. Even with this. We don't know if

(15:47):
if this tulip bulb viceroy sold for this amount or
if this is all part of the speculation, but it
was the offering price. Um, and it's it really is
kind of a I don't want to say unique, but
um a rare statistic from this time of of tulip
bulb's name and its price and its weight all being

(16:09):
put out there. We don't have that much information about it. Um.
And this whole era is sort of filled with these legends.
There's another really great one from this time which might
even be better known than that herring onion bulb beginning
that we told him. But the legend of the Black Tulip,
which ultimately inspired Alexander Dumas a novel also called The

(16:32):
Black tulip Um. This one, this one is starting to
show that there's bad feelings in the tulip trade. It
goes like this. There's a group of Harlem florists and
they hear that a cobbler at the Hague has produced
a black tulip, a rare coveted black tulip, and they
go to him and they haggle with him for a while,

(16:53):
and they finally work out a deal. They buy it
for one thousand and five hundred florins, and as soon
as it's there's they take it and they throw it
on the ground and they stomp it to bits. And
they tell him that he's a fool to have produced
this black tulip and to have sold it to them
for so little. They would have given him ten thousand
florins if he had asked, and they tell him that

(17:15):
he'll never ever be so lucky again to breathe this
black tulip. And as the story goes, he's so distraught
that he takes to bed and he dies. Of course
that has to be the end to the moral fairy
tale kind of black story. Yeah, but there's there's a
lot of bitterness even if we even if we step

(17:35):
away from this like obviously polemical story. Yeah, it was
bitterness about the people who quite didn't understand the tulip
thing or didn't thought it was kind of crazy, kind
of out there, but probably like a lot of people
now do. Um. For example, Harlem priest Theodicus Cats wrote
to his nephew on February five, six thirty seven that

(17:56):
like the plague that had been bad since sixty five,
now quote another sickness had risen. It is the sickness
of the Bloomston and Floriston. Also, historian Theodoras Trevilius wrote
a much later in he wrote a letter that said, quote,
I don't know what kind of angry spirit was called
it from hell, but our descendants doubtless will laugh as

(18:18):
a at the human insanity of our age that in
our times the tulip flowers have been so revered. So yeah,
a lot of self criticism even at the time, Um,
like what are we doing spending all of this money
and obsessing over tulips, So surprise, surprise. By February sixty seven,
the market collapses. Supposedly, as the traditional story goes, Um,

(18:41):
it's because an expected buyer fails to show up and
the whole market loses confidence. But more likely it's just
that people started to realize around this time that the
paper chain of buying and trading these these little descriptions
of tulips that are in the ground would only work
and they would only make their profit if there was

(19:03):
a buyer at the end, as we mentioned before. So yeah,
like if I bought a tulip from you, Toblina, and
I was trying to make money off of it, I
would know that I had to get like our producer
Jerry to buy the bulb ultimately, because if she didn't
buy it, then I'd be left with the toilip bulb
and trying to decide if I even wanted to pay

(19:25):
you for it, So it might all end up on
your lap. No way, cracking skulls at that point. Um.
So the sellers want their money, but there's really no
way to enforce these oral agreements. Um. As Sarah mentioned,
they probably weren't as violent as I just was. Um.
By March or so, it suggested that all trades since

(19:47):
the previous September be nullified. But at that point the
High Court steps in they say, basically, deal with it.
We don't want to deal with it. What they say
is all transactions remain enforce but deal with it yourself.
Don't come to us about it, essentially. And so, I mean,
just one example of how people tried to deal with it,

(20:08):
there was a self established commission of tradesmen set up
in Harlem and they decided that the contracts there would
be settled for three point five percent of the purchase price.
And of course nobody is happy with this. It's a
lose lose situation for everyone. If you are left with
the bulb, you are expecting a lot more for that,

(20:28):
and you know, presumably you've been making some bets yourself.
If you're stuck paying three point five percent of the
purchase price, you're just throwing away money essentially. So at
this point the story gets kind of mythic again, and
you know, it's kind of like the black tulip. So
supposedly the bubble bust just shakes the Dutch economy to

(20:52):
a tremendous extent because the investment is so widespread up
their speculators across classes, so bankruptcy it's common, and people
lose their houses and their businesses for tulips, and it
becomes the classic cautionary tale of being a little more
careful with your money, and sort of the poster boy

(21:13):
for it is Jan van Goyen, who was an artist
and supposedly died in debt because of tulips. Well we'll
find out a little bit more about that lately later
He did die in debt, but not necessarily because of
his tulip speculation. So needless to say, it's painted as
a pretty dire situation, and it's easy to see how

(21:35):
it was used as a cautionary tale. Recently, though, there's
been a little bit of a shift in how some
people look at the tulip bubble. For example, writer and
gold Girl suggested in two thousand sevens Tulipmania, Money, Honor
and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age that the idea
that the tulip mania was economically devastating to Holland is
the result of a few contemporary polemical pamphlets which were

(21:57):
written to basically make people more prudent in their own
business affairs. These in turn, she suggests we're taken up
by historians and gradually filtered into fact. So yeah, and
and sort of to add to that, because they because
this story has so frequently been used as an anecdote,
it sort of took on a sheen of current bubble comparison.

(22:20):
So if you're if you're writing about the south Sea bubble,
or if you're writing about housing housing today, yeah, it
takes on a little bit of whatever you're comparing it to.
And in a review for Reviews in History, j Leslie
Price wrote that the book was quote determinedly revisionists. So,
I mean, I really think this this book kind of

(22:42):
shook up the tulip story. But um, to add to that, recently,
a lot of economists have debated whether it was the
bubble at all. And and there are precise economic definitions
for for what that means that we're not going to
get into. But um, it seems to be like maybe
a fun exercise for economists or or perhaps the serious

(23:03):
study um to figure out if there was a bubble
and then to debate either for against it. Yes there
was a bubble, No, there were market reasons behind it. Um,
it's It's created a whole whole new topic of discussion
for these tulips. Yeah, And similarly, I think looking at

(23:24):
gold Gurl's argument is kind of a fun exercise for
historians as well, because she's just sort of searching for
the source that this tale came from in the first place. Definitely,
I always, I always like when I get a surprise
like this in an episode. I mean, I'm always relieved
that I found this update to the story. It terrifies
me that I won't someday, but um, it's it's fun

(23:47):
for us for sure. Yeah. So just a little bit
on Goldger's argument, most of her revision, so to speak,
come at the sake of traditional toolip sources or the canon,
you might say. Yeah, um, and a lot of our
traditional sources on tulipmania come from Charles McKay's Extraordinary Popular

(24:07):
Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which was published in
eighteen forty one. It's a pretty popular book. It's actually
still in print. I looked it up. You could, you
could order it, um, And it paints a lot of
these really exciting stories about the bubble, like the mistaken
onions and things like oxen cheese, and clothes being traded

(24:30):
for one vice. Roy bulb Um the really picturesque accounts
of the story, but as gold Guard and covered it
turned out Charles McKay's main source was Johann Beckman, who
wrote a History of Inventions, Discoveries and Origins in sevent
and Beckman is an interesting character because he seems to

(24:53):
be one of the first major people who projected his
contemporary concerns onto the Dutch bubble, so economic concerns for
his time um and he may have also been the
guy who gave us the idea that the bubble burst
because the bloomaston became pure speculators. They weren't just collectors anymore.

(25:15):
And he seemed to view this almost as as expected
that well, surely you wouldn't just beat tulip fanciers and
spend these huge amounts of money. But he wrote, quote,
how ridiculous would it have been to purchase useless roots
with their weight in gold if the possession of the
flower had been the only object? Pretty I guess he
did wasn't in a tulip? Apparently not so? He His

(25:39):
argument kind of relies on Abraham Munting, a botanical writer
from the seventeenth century, whose father lost money on tulips,
but since Munting was too young to be their first hand,
his sources also came from somewhere else. So his sources
came from a chronicle or named Luva von night Seema
in sixteen sixty nine, and also a propaganda piece by
Audreyan Woman from sixteen thirty seven. So it Seema was

(26:03):
also drawing from sources from pamphlets. And we're left at
this point with pamphlets is like the basis the main
source for all of this stuff when we filter it
all down, when you filter it all down to the bottom,
that's what you get. And so of course the pamphlets
are gonna be anti speculation. They're going to be encouraging

(26:24):
people to not go out and blow all their money
on tulips. But it's interesting because Goldgert also takes the
closer look at a few of the most famous Mania
anecdotes and assumptions. For instance, the artists I mentioned earlier
who died in debt. For example, he did die in debt,
but it was much later in sixteen fifty six, perhaps

(26:46):
in debt for yet another speculative scheme, but not tulips
and Another issue that Goldgirl addresses is the idea that
the bubble had such a tremendously broad effect on the
economy because so many people were involved, rich people, poor people,
people in between. Instead, she argues that the bloom Aston

(27:07):
were this really tight knit group of people who worked
together for years and years and years. Most of them
loved collecting tulips as well as trading them, and they
would meet in inns and dispute toolip, you know, have
tulip talk with each other and dispute and exchange and trade.
And so certain members of the bloom Aston were obviously

(27:31):
severely shaken by the crash, but their numbers were smaller
than often thought. And of course, even if you were
a speculator, you didn't get into too much trouble if
you were in the middle of that chain, because hopefully
things would cancel, cancel, other things out, other debts and credits. Um.
So just sort of suggesting that maybe there was a
smaller pool of people affected by this crisis. The entirety

(27:54):
of Holland wasn't devastated because of this, uh, the tulip bubble. Yeah,
but gold Girl all would suggest that the bubble was
indeed a social and cultural crisis, So she doesn't deny
that in her book at all. Yeah, a real value
shock for the people of the country. And in the
sixteen thirties, the Dutch Republic was in boom times. It

(28:15):
was really good period and capitalism was sort of taking off,
but didn't quite sit right with everybody yet. And the
bubble scared people for a few reasons, apparently enough to
make them right some of these very angry concerned pamphlets.
So a few of those scary things. I mean, the

(28:35):
main one is that buyers were nagged after prices fell.
Nobody likes to see that. That's a that's a bad
sign for business. And then there was the fact that
the sellers basically had no recourse to get their money back. Um,
this one is interesting. Um the menon nights. This was
one of the reasons is that the Mennonites, who refused

(28:57):
to swear oaths and were considered very trustworthy, they were
also involved in a tulip trade and that act of
broken and so it was sort of like, if you
can't trust the Mennonites, who can you trust. Yeah, it
was it was unsettling for your average person. And I mean,
if we go into the product itself. It was disturbing

(29:17):
to people that are products value no longer had to
seem it leaves roughly on par with its market worth.
If you have a bulb that somebody can mistake as
an onion, although with that toxic substance, I don't know,
probably not mistake it as an onion. Um, you have
something that seems low value suddenly going for huge amounts.

(29:41):
And scariest of all though, is that people could get
rich through luck rather than work, which could potentially upset
the social order, which was a very dangerous thing. Indeed. Right,
So lots of scary new modern things kind of all
jumbled up together there. And we sort of talked about
this earlier, how we liked both versions of the story,

(30:02):
both the revisionist history on how the valid trade failed
and kind of the hysterical tale of my story speculation
that makes such a quaint and um, I guess interesting
intro to stories on modern booms and bus Yeah, I
like the story about a cow going for a toolip bulb.
And it's obviously quite likely that economists will continue to

(30:25):
debate whether this was really a bubble at all. I've
seen all sorts of back and forth. Yes, it is
a bubble, No it isn't. There were market explanations, yes,
how could you not think it was a bubble. Everybody
has an opinion, and I guess if they work it
all out eventually though, when it turns out to not
be a bubble, business writers are going to be out
of a really tasty anecdote. Yeah. I mean it does

(30:49):
make a good hook for a stag. Still use it,
maybe they I would still I would still read it, Yeah, definitely,
And we just thought it would be appropriate to close
with some current statistics about the Netherlands toolip production, and
maybe a note on the Dutch Republic too. I didn't
have all this straightened out, honestly, and I had to

(31:09):
look into it some. The difference between the Dutch Republic,
Holland and the Netherlands Um. Why we have mentioned Holland
so much rather than the Dutch Republic is because at
the time the tulip trade took place mostly within Holland
and its cities like Amsterdam and the Hague in Leiden
and Harlem. Um. Today, though the Kingdom of the Netherlands

(31:31):
makes up three parts, there's the Netherlands in Europe, which
of course includes Holland and the Netherlands, Antillies and Aruba,
so all over the world. But a geography lesson for you.
It's a little pop geography question and a little economics
lesson to top it off. Um Today the Netherlands still
produces three billion bulbs a year, so it didn't completely

(31:53):
wipe out the tulip trade even if the story of
the bubble is true. Fields cover half the country and
the Dutch flower industry actually has sevent of international production
of flowers and the trade. So people take vacations just
to to see the flowers blooming. They look lovely. I
was looking at the tourist website while I was doing

(32:15):
some research on this pretty nice, very nice. Well, I
guess that about wraps it up for the tulip bubble
or tulip mania. Maybe there will be some new economic
research that comes out soon or something and we can
or food or medicinal research will finally figure out what
carols was. Can you cook with tulip bulbs? Let us know, yeah,

(32:35):
some of you probably do know. I would actually be
interested in what the medicinal purposes for tulips are because
I know people use toxic herbs for medicinal purposes or
they have in the past. But yeah, I guess that's
is a good point, is any to bring us to
listener mail? So this message is from Laura and she

(32:56):
wrote Dear Sarah and to Bolina hell A ladies. In December,
I visited a friend of mine in Chicago before heading
home to my parents house in Wisconsin for Christmas, and
while he was there, she took me to the Crisp
Kendle market at Daily Plaza. The market runs from Thanksgiving
to Christmas and consists of mostly German vendors who sell
all sorts of items, food, beverages, et cetera. A good

(33:18):
place to go for unique or unusual gifts. Anyway, we
were at one of the vendors that sold German glass
ornaments in this place had an ornament shaped like every object, animal,
or symbol imaginable. Well, imagine my surprise when I see
a basket with King Ludwig ornaments in it. I immediately
remembered your podcast, magg King Ludvig dines alone and the

(33:39):
comments about how he's still to this day well revered,
well enough that they sell ornaments in his likeness. And
she also sent us a photo which is really funny.
I mean, it's a it's a bust of King Ludwig
made in glass. I'm I'm not so sure how accurate
the likeness is, but still I really like the idea

(33:59):
of trimming my tree next year with nad King Ludwig.
I think I might have to make a trip to
Chicago and check out this Christmas bot. It. I don't know,
but we'll have to. We'll have to email her back
and ask her can you bought a couple? Um? But anyways,
if you have any suggestions or comments, um or even

(34:21):
just fun tips about where to get cool Christmas ornaments,
let us know. You can email us at History Podcast
at how stuff works dot com. You can also find
us on Twitter and mist in history, and we're on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about economic bubbles in general, you can look it up
on our home page by typing in the title, which

(34:41):
is which economic bubble will be next to burst at
www dot how stuff works dot com. For more on
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.

(35:01):
The housetufforks iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes. M hmmmmm