Tulipomania: the story of the world's most coveted flower & the extraordinary passions it aroused by Mike Dash

Author:Mike Dash [Mike Dash]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Histoire
ISBN: 9780609807651
Published: 2010-02-10T10:00:00+00:00

When selling in het ootje, this same figure was sketched on the slates of each member of the college. A florist who wished to dispose of some bulbs would write in the small o at the bottom of the diagram the number of stuivers he was prepared to donate as a bounty or commission to a buyer. The amount would vary depending on the seller’s assessment of the value of his bulbs, but again it would be somewhere between two and six stuivers—that is, about the cost of a round or two of drinks. Prospective florists among the college would then offer what they thought the tulips were worth, the secretary keeping track of the bids by noting down the highest offer in thousands in the top semicircle, in hundreds in the bottom one, and in units underneath the vertical line. When the bidding was at an end, the secretary would strike three lines through the diagram on his board and surround the whole thing with a big O—the tulip trade’s equivalent, it would appear, of the modern auctioneer’s cry of “Going, going, gone.” This concluded the auction, and the seller had the option of accepting or rejecting the highest bid; but if he refused it, he still had to give the thwarted buyer the commission specified in het ootje. This method of trading bulbs, then, also placed a premium on accepting rather than rejecting a decent bid.

So far so good, and it is clear that the tavern clubs facilitated the tulip trade by providing a meeting place for like-minded florists, offering them warm and comfortable surroundings and ensuring that their business was conducted in a haze of alcoholic enthusiasm. If they had done no more than that, the colleges would probably have ensured that bulb prices rose sharply, and a mania of some sort would have ensued. In fact, the customs of the tavern trade had an even greater impact.

First, as we have seen, the colleges proved willing to trade not just real, physical tulips but also the rights to ownership of bulbs that were still in the ground. Thus they changed the tulip trade from a seasonal thing, possible only for a few summer months after the bulbs had been lifted, to a business that could continue all the year round. This gave the traders—who, it must be remembered, rarely had gardens of their own to tend—something to do during the winter, maximized their potential for profit, and also ensured that the wijnkoopsgeld continued to flow to everyone’s satisfaction. Second, the colleges failed utterly to check whether their members had enough money to cover their debts or even owned the tulips they traded. In the absence of physically real bulbs, this would seem to be an elementary precaution, but they did not take it. The tavern clubs thus encouraged unbridled speculation, while offering their members absolutely no safeguards against insolvency and fraud. It was now quite possible for a florist who owned no bulbs to trade, in the

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