Tulipomania – Mike Dash

In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands noticed that normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens were caught up in a frenzy of buying and selling. The object of this speculation was the tulip, an import that had bewitched horticulturists, noblemen, and tavern owners alike. Rare bulbs changed hands for ever-increasing sums, until single flowers were being sold for more than the cost of a house.

Author

Mike Dash, the author of Tulipomania, Batavia’s Graveyard, Thug, Satan’s Circus and now The First Family, was born, in 1963, just outside London, and educated at Gatow School, Berlin, Wells Cathedral School, Somerset, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read history and ran the Cambridge student magazine.