BC / ADBCE / CE

1636 CE–1637 CE

Dutch tulip contracts and price collapse

Money, banking & finance · Mercados y riesgo

The boom and collapse of 1636–1637 involved private forward contracts on bulbs, often without immediate delivery or margin requirements. Academic evidence debates scope, prices, and effects; this entry records a localised episode of contractual risk and renegotiation, not the myth of an instant ruin of the whole Dutch economy or one lesson about “irrationality.”

Precision, calendar, and review
Start
year · no uncertainty qualifier in this record
End
year · no uncertainty qualifier in this record
Calendar and convention
Historical-era years; the source calendar is not identified. No conversion of days is assumed.
Year zero
The scale goes from 1 BCE to 1 CE without year zero. Changing era names changes labels only.
Documentary review
Date not recorded

Reading the date: duration of a process.

Sources

  1. www.cambridge.org (opens in a new tab)
    Source provenance and scope
    Publication date
    2017-08
    What this date describes
    The cited source or edition; it may postdate the historical event.
    Bibliographic date checked
    2026-09-23
    Date evidence
    Declared in the cited source’s publisher metadata.

    The correspondence between this reference and individual claims has not yet been itemized.

This record is an editorial synthesis. Consult the sources to check claims and their limits. Chronological relationships alone do not establish causation.

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