Podcasts · The Ottoman Empire and Its Influence on Modern Europe — Fexingo History

The Tulip Mania That Fooled Europe

8 Oct 2026 · 6:51 · S6 E258

In the early eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire experienced a cultural flowering known as the Lale Devri, or Era of Tulips. While European artists and writers were captivated by the exotic allure of Istanbul—dubbing it Turquerie—they often misunderstood the reality behind the glamour. This episode explores how the tulip bulb, native to Central Asia and cultivated in Ottoman gardens for centuries, became an accidental commodity that triggered one of history's first speculative bubbles. We follow the journey of these flowers from the private courtyards of Sultan Ahmed III’s court to the auction houses of Amsterdam, where they fueled a financial craze that crashed with spectacular violence. Through the eyes of merchants like Abraham Peeters and the artistic documentation of Jean-Baptiste van Mour, we uncover how global trade networks connected the Bosphorus to the North Sea, creating economic vulnerabilities that predated the famous Dutch Tulip Mania by decades. The story reveals not just about flowers, but about information asymmetry, colonial extraction, and the surprising ways imperial cultures influence each other through seemingly trivial objects.

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