Tulipomania - Mike Dash [116]
Kappists Bulgatz, Ponzi Schemes, p. 99.
Flood of broadsides About forty-five examples printed between December 1636 and March 1637 are known to have survived, but given the ephemeral nature of such products, the number actually produced was almost certainly greater.
The role of pamphlets Although most of the surviving broadsides are unoriginal and contain little that is new, they are often unintentionally revealing. It is particularly instructive to compare the relatively mild and sober tones of the early pamphlets with the increasingly bitter and sarcastic prints that began to appear when the craze was at its peak in January 1637; this adds weight to the suggestion that the tulip trade had remained relatively sober and responsible until quite late in 1636 and flared into true mania only at the end of the year for a matter of a few weeks. On pamphlets generally, see Harline, Pamphlets, Printing; and Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, pp. 264–66.
Flora in the pamphlets Krelage, De Pamfletten, pp. 88–91, 109–11, 149, 160, 164–67, 187–88.
The legend of Flora This retelling of the myth appeared in the first of the Samenspraecken. See Posthumus, “Die Speculatie in Tulpen” (1926), p. 24. See also Segal and Roding, De Tulp en de Kunst, p. 23, and Segal, Tulips Portrayed, p. 15.
Artistic depictions of the mania Segal, Tulips Portrayed, pp. 12–15; Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, pp. 363–66; Bulgatz, Ponzi Schemes, pp. 106–07.
Pamphlets commissioned by growers or connoisseurs See Krelage, De Pamfletten, pamphlets no. 9, 14, 33, 36.
Resolutions of Haarlem City Council Municipal Archives, Haarlem, Aantee-keningen van C. J. Gonnet Betreffende de Dovestalmanege in de Grote Houstraat, de Schouwburg op het Houtplein, het Stadhuis in de Frase Tijd, Haarlemse Plateelbakkers en Plateelbakkerijen en de Tulpomanie van 1637–1912; Posthumus, “Die Speculatie in Tulpen” (1927), pp. 51, 57; and Krelage, Bloemenspeculatie in Nederland, p. 93.
Hoorn’s plea to the States of Holland Posthumus, “Die Speculatie in Tulpen” (1927), p. 52.
Only two of the fifty-four They were Burgomaster Jan de Waal and Councilor Cornelis Guldewagen. Ibid., pp. 61–64, 73–74; Municipal Archives, Haarlem, Heerenboek I.
One anonymous author Krelage, “Het Manuscript over den Tulpenwind-handel,” pp. 29–30.
Blame placed on bankrupts, Jews, and Mennonites Ibid.; Deursen, Plain Lives, pp. 32–33; Krelage, De Pamfletten, pp. 287–302. Jacques de Clerq Information courtesy of drs Daan de Clercq, Amsterdam. A grower from Amsterdam Krelage, “Het Manuscript over den Tulpenwind-handel,” pp. 29–30.
Jan Breughel Blunt and Stearn, Art of Botanical Illustration, p. 128.
The Court of Holland and the resolution of the States Posthumus, “Die Speculatie in Tulpen” (1927), pp. 56–60; Posthumus, “Tulip Mania in Holland,” p. 146; Krelage, Bloemenspeculatie in Nederland, p. 93; and Bulgatz, Ponzi Schemes, pp. 104–05.
In the event, the Court of Holland did hear at least one tulip case. This was a suit brought by the widow of Paulus van Beresteyn, who had been one of Haarlem’s most eminent attorneys. Van Beresteyn came from a patrician family and was rich and influential enough to be counted among the regents of Haarlem even though he was a professed Catholic. He was a lieutenant of the civic guard and a governor of the Latin School, which prepared the children of the ruling class for the university. He was an extremely wealthy man, with total capital well in excess of twelve thousand guilders, and he invested some of his money in Haarlem property. His interest in tulips, though, was probably that of a connoisseur rather than a florist. He lived in a large house on the Wijngaerderstraat and grew tulips in a garden on the Dijcklaan—a road that ran between two of the city’s gates.
Van Beresteyn died, aged forty-eight, at the height of the mania in December 1636, two months before tulip prices crashed and eight