- [Narrator] Outside Amsterdam 1625.
Adrienne Pao is a big man in Amsterdam.
He's one of the political worthies of the city.
The closest thing the United Provinces
have to a Prime Minister
and one of the richest men in the Netherlands.
His stately manner outside the city grounds is so vast
he opens it as a public park on the weekends.
And his greatest pride is his bed of rare tulips.
From the walking path, you can see hundreds of blossoms
or so it appears,
if you go closer, you'll notice something unusual.
At the center of the field sits a single tulip bed
and around it are a cunning set of mirrors
creating an illusion of plenty.
Oh yeah.
Even Adrienne Pao with his immense wealth
can only afford a few dozen tulips.
(upbeat music)
Thanks so much to HelloFresh
for continuing to help us bring history to the table.
Last episode, we started our exploration
of the Dutch Tulip mania,
supposedly the first asset bubble in history.
And we closed by mentioning that one of the great myths
of the Tulip mania is that the flowers themselves
were useless and unwanted.
The people were only investing in them
due to their perceived value for resale.
But that isn't true,
the traders and tulip fanciers of the Netherlands
thought the flowers had intrinsic value
and they weren't the only ones.
Tulips had been popular for centuries.
See, tulips don't come from Europe.
They're native to the lower regions
of the Tien Shan Mountains
which separates what now is China
from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Right on the silk road, a hardy flower,
it could survive under winter snow.
It was little like the domesticated tulips we know today,
this flower easily transported by digging up the bulb
moved westward to Persia
where it became a symbol of beauty and romantic love.
Several famous Muslim poets used them in their writing
but it was one particular group of Turkic nomads
who would eventually be known as the Ottomans
who held the tulip in particularly high esteem.
To the Ottomans, the tulip had multi-layered significance.
It was seen as a favorite flower of God
since its name in Arabic, Lale,
contained the same letters as Allah.
It represented the beauty imperfection of God's creation.
And since certain branches of Islam had a prohibition
against depicting the human form in art,
stylized tulips became a popular subject
for intricate pattern work on clothing.
However, due to the prohibition on displaying images
these patterns appeared on under clothing
such as shirts or underwear.
Though in later centuries
the ban would become less stringent
allowing those tulip designs to appear on clothes,
flags, military helmets, and as architectural decorations.
The Ottoman love affair with the tulip was a lasting one.
When Mehmed II took Constantinople,
he established a tulip garden
that still survives to this day.
During the time of Suleiman the Magnificent,
the sultan wore tulip designs.
It was the fashion for men to place tulips
in their turbans.
And thousands of gardeners
attended the grounds at Topkapi Palace.
Gardeners who looked pretty intimidating
because in addition to keeping the grounds
and guarding the Sultan,
they had another role as executioners.
Any vizier who was summoned to the throne room
and saw the head gardener present
knew he was there to prune more than the bushes
if you catch my meaning.
Executions aside, to this day
the tulip remains a symbol of Turkey,
and appears on Turkish Airlines jets.
An ambassador to The Holy Roman Empire
supposedly brought tulip bulbs to Europe in 1558
but evidence suggests they were already there.
What's sure is that we can attribute
their spread through Europe
to a single eccentric botanist.
Carolus Clusius was born in the Netherlands in 1526
and originally studied to become a lawyer and theologian,
before switching to medicine.
Though he wasn't that interested in healing people
rather he was into horticulture and botany.
And the only people who worked in those disciplines
were doctors trying to find new medicines.
Botany was exploding then.
New samples were coming from the Americas,
the first botanical gardens formed
and book technology had reached a point
where Botanical ncyclopedias could be mass produced.
Clusius got his medical degree
and dove right into writing
several landmark books about plants.
A constant letter writer, he also kept correspondence
with botanical enthusiasts across Europe.
And there were a lot
since gardening was a rising leisure activity
among aristocrats and the middle-class,
but he also sent more than letters.
Clusius was happy to ship his friends seeds,
bulbs or cuttings from interesting specimens
so they could grow new and rare plants themselves.
And to be clear this was extremely generous of him,
since competition for new specimens
and exotic plants at the time was very fierce.
In fact, there was a roaring trade in plant theft
with researchers or even private collectors
hiring gangs to conduct midnight raids
on their rivals' gardens.
Clusius himself fell victim to this at least twice
once even suffering the indignity
of taking a tour of a private collection
and realizing that most of the women's specimens
came from his own garden.
But it was when Clusius accepted a job
heading the Imperial Medical Garden in Vienna
that he met his true horticultural love.
Because the friend who got him that gig was, guess who?
The tulip transporting ambassador.
Clusius would subsequently spend much of his life
researching, investigating, cataloging,
and generally geeking out about tulips.
And when he took a new job to establish a botanical garden
in the Dutch University Town of Leiden
he took his tulips with him.
It turned out tulips were tailor made for the Netherlands,
growing well in the poor sandy soil of the coast,
and able to weather the cold and wet climate.
But what especially fascinated Clusius,
was how tulips could be cross pollinated
and hybridized to create new varieties.
Within a few decades, new yellow and purple tulips emerged,
and the dagger-like petals of the Ottoman tulips
softened to the now customary shape.
Yet to Clusius,
the most intriguing of all, were broken tulips.
Certain specimens that exhibited odd patterns
with flame like stripes or speckles.
Now seeds grown from these specimens
didn't produce this effect,
but offsets, little subsidiary bulbs to the main tulip bulb
would carry the trait once they flowered
two years after planting.
Of course Clusius couldn't know
that this was not an inherent trait but due to a virus.
These tulips considered the most beautiful and valuable
were actually infected with what is today known as
Mosaic virus,
causing a loss of color in interesting patterns.
However, this also made these bulbs sickly.
So they produced fewer offsets,
one or two per year rather than four.
Meaning these most desirable tulips were also the rarest.
Clusius true to form spent his time in the Netherlands
literally giving tulips away.
He shipped bulbs to almost anyone who asked,
single-handedly planting tulips
all across the United Provinces
while also producing knowledge
on how to grow and hybridize them,
literally sowing the seeds of Tulip mania.
Oh, and y'all, people wanted these tulips.
They wanted them bad, because though the newly independent
United Provinces of the Netherlands
had become the richest country in Europe
due to the Dutch East India Company,
land reclamation and stock markets,
there wasn't really a lot for the rich to spend money on.
You see, the Netherlands was not just a Protestant country,
they were strict Calvinists.
You could be fined for telling jokes in church,
reading material was usually moralistic in nature
and everyone was supposed to wear
the same pattern of black and white clothing.
So here you are, a wealthy merchant.
You've got all this money, what do you spend it on?
What's a status symbol that aligns with your beliefs?
Well, you can't go sponsoring
gold alter pieces for the church.
No flashy clothes.
Hmm, you could get a nice canal side mansion
outside Amsterdam,
but then what are you gonna put in it?
Well, how about a cabinet of curiosities?
To show how educated you are
by having your own little museum
complete with stuff like sea shell.
Seashells are popular.
Ooh, how about a Baroque painting?
Nice. Oh, but you still have money, huh?
How about a Baroque painting
of you with your seashell?
Boom! There it is.
Now of course we're having a little fun here
but really for these folks,
tulips offered a perfect solution.
Since a tulip was made by God,
there was nothing vain about it.
Since it required special knowledge to grow and care for,
it showed off how smart you were
and growing tulips was a process
of honest toil in the open air
so it wasn't considered frivolous.
Best of all, it had a sense of the exotic East.
So popular in the Netherlands,
a country made rich by the Asia trade.
Also, look, something's gotta go
in the mansion's big front yard right?
But only the finest tulips would do, not the common variety.
Broken tulips were best,
or any of the recently created varieties
with subtle color shifts.
Yet since they were newly invented,
those most coveted tulips were the hardest to get.
And since the rich were so interested
in buying tulips it only made sense
that others would be interested in selling them.
So join us next time as the Dutch tulip market explodes,
prices go to the moon, and they most assuredly stay there.
(upbeat music) Right?
Well, while we wait to see what blooms next
during the Tulip mania,
maybe we should start thinking about dinner.
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(upbeat music)