I just found out about a new book on the sixteenth century Dutch “Tulipmania,” Anne Goldgar’s Tulipmania. The book seems very intriguing because the University of Chicago Press description suggests that Goldgar’s scholarship is focused on debunking the myth that the Tulipmania episode was a case of the excess of financial speculation.

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. She shows how Dutch citizens became enchanted by the combination of art and science that made up a tulip bulb, and how experts in tulips appeared in communities of merchants and craftsmen. She also illustrates vividly how the plague, the concerns of capitalism, and the loss of trust among individuals in a rapidly changing society combined to create the cultural crisis that was tulipmania.

I’m very excited to read this book because I’ve been interested in “Tulipmania” since I was a teenager and first read about it in the context of learning about the stock market and financial speculation. Definitely a book I am going to add to my summer reading list!