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In the 1630s the Netherlands was gripped by tulipmania: a speculative fever unprecedented in scale and, as popular history would have it, folly. We all know the outline of the story—how otherwise sensible merchants, nobles, and artisans spent all they had (and much that they didn’t) on tulip bulbs. We have heard how these bulbs changed hands hundreds of times in a single day, and how some bulbs, sold and resold for thousands of guilders, never even existed. Tulipmania is seen as an example of the gullibility of crowds and the dangers of financial speculation. But it wasn’t like that. As Anne Goldgar reveals in Tulipmania, not one of these stories is true. Making use of extensive archival research, she lays waste to the legends, revealing that while the 1630s did see a speculative bubble in tulip prices, neither the height of the bubble nor its bursting were anywhere near as dramatic as we tend to think. By clearing away the accumulated myths, Goldgar is able to show us instead the far more interesting reality: the ways in which tulipmania reflected deep anxieties about the transformation of Dutch society in the Golden Age.

In Holland in the 1600s, a birthday gift of eight precious tulip bulbs is traded into livestock, furniture, and a valuable painting.

Background Phylogenetic research in Tulipa (Liliaceae), a genus of significant economic and horticultural value, has relied on limited nuclear (mostly nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer, nrITS) and plastid DNA sequences, resulting in low-resolution phylogenetic trees and uncertain intrageneric classifications. The genus, noted for its large genome, presents discordant relationships among Amana , Erythronium , and Tulipa , likely due to incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) and/or reticulate evolution. Thus, phylogenomic approaches are needed to clarify these relationships and the conflicting signals within the tribe Tulipeae. Results We newly sequenced 50 transcriptomes of 46 species of tribe Tulipeae (including multiple accessions of all four genera) and one outgroup species of the sister tribe Lilieae ( Notholirion campanulatum ), and downloaded 15 previously published transcriptomes of tribe Tulipeae to supplement the sampling. One plastid dataset (74 plastid protein-coding genes, PCGs) and one nuclear dataset (2594 nuclear orthologous genes, OGs) were constructed, with the latter used for species tree inference based on maximum likelihood (ML) and multi-species coalescent (MSC) methods. To investigate causes of gene tree discordance, “site con/discordance factors” (sCF and sDF1/sDF2) were calculated first, after which phylogenetic nodes displaying high or imbalanced sDF1/2 were selected for phylogenetic network analyses and polytomy tests to determine whether ILS or reticulate evolution best explain incongruence. Key relationships not resolved by this technique, especially those among Amana , Erythronium , and Tulipa , were further investigated by applying D-statistics and QuIBL. Conclusions We failed to reconstruct a reliable and unambiguous evolutionary history among Amana , Erythronium , and Tulipa due to especially pervasive ILS and reticulate evolution, likely caused either by obscured minority phylogenetic signal or differing signals among genomic compartments. However, within Tulipa we confirmed the monophyly of most subgenera, with the exception of two species in the small subgenus Orithyia , of which Tulipa heterophylla was recovered as sister to the remainder of the genus, whereas T . sinkiangensis clustered within subgenus Tulipa . In contrast, most traditional sections of Tulipa were found to be non-monophyletic.

Xinjiang, China, is arid, and its ecological environment is fragile. Tulipa iliensis is mainly distributed in the Xinjiang region of China, with an altitude of around 800–2100 m. As an important part of desert vegetation, it plays a very important role in the stability of regional ecosystems. To understand how Tulipa iliensis adapts to changes in altitude in arid areas and uncover its ecological adaptation strategy, the study focused on the rhizosphere soil from seven natural distribution areas (1386~2073 m) of Tulipa iliensis in Xinjiang. The growth indicators (plant height, leaf length, fresh weight and dry weight of each organ), physical and chemical properties of the rhizosphere soil (total nitrogen, organic matter, organic carbon, total phosphorus, total potassium, ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, available phosphorus, available potassium, pH, moisture content) and rhizosphere soil enzyme activities (phosphatase, polyphenol oxidase, peroxidase, urease, sucrase, catalase) of Tulipa iliensis in each distribution area were determined, revealing the response of the ecological adaptation of Tulipa iliensis to altitude change. The results revealed that (1) at altitudes ranging from 1386 ~ 2073 m, the variation coefficient of the growth indicators of Tulipa iliensis ranged from 7.64 to 48.62%; among them, the variation degree of the leaf fresh weight was the highest, the variation coefficient was 48.62%, the variation degree of the root dry weight was the smallest, and the variation coefficient was 7.64%. Moreover, regression analysis revealed that altitude was significantly positively correlated with the plant height and leaf length of Tulipa iliensis , which was the main factor affecting its growth indicators. (2) The coefficients of variation for the physical and chemical properties of the rhizosphere soil of associated with Tulipa iliensis exhibited a range from 2.47 to 53.43%; Notably, total potassium, available phosphorus, organic carbon, ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen and total nitrogen displayed coefficients of variation exceeding 40%; In constrast, the variation in pH was minimal, with pH values ranging from 7.52 to 8.07, which suggests that the soil is weakly alkaline in nature. (3) As altitude increases, the coefficient of variation for the rhizosphere soil enzyme activity of Tulipa iliensis exhibited a range from 10.87 to 34.29%, the enzyme with the highest variation was soil sucrase, while the enzyme demonstrating the least variation was rhizosphere soil polyphenol oxidase. (4) Redundancy analysis indicated that the total nitrogen, total phosphorus and sucrase activities in the rhizosphere soil of Tulipa iliensis were the key factors influencing its adaptation to various ecological environments. The findings of this research offer significant theoretical insights for the sustainable management of Tulipa iliensis vegetation in arid regions, as well as for the restoration and rehabilitation of desert ecosystems.

In the 1630s the Netherlands was gripped by tulipmania: a speculative fever unprecedented in scale and, as popular history would have it, folly. We all know the outline of the story-how otherwise sensible merchants, nobles, and artisans spent all they had (and much that they didn't) on tulip bulbs. We have heard how these bulbs changed hands hundreds of times in a single day, and how some bulbs, sold and resold for thousands of guilders, never even existed. Tulipmania is seen as an example of the gullibility of crowds and the dangers of financial speculation. But it wasn't like that. As Anne Goldgar reveals in Tulipmania, not one of these stories is true. Making use of extensive archival research, she lays waste to the legends, revealing that while the 1630s did see a speculative bubble in tulip prices, neither the height of the bubble nor its bursting were anywhere near as dramatic as we tend to think. By clearing away the accumulated myths, Goldgar is able to show us instead the far more interesting reality: the ways in which tulipmania reflected deep anxieties about the transformation of Dutch society in the Golden Age. \"Goldgar tells us at the start of her excellent debunking book: 'Most of what we have heard of [tulipmania] is not true.'. . . She tells a new story.\"-Simon Kuper, Financial Times.

The jargon of economics and finance contains numerous colorful terms for market-asset prices at odds with any reasonable economic explanation. Examples include bubble, tulipmania, chain letter, Ponzi scheme, panic, crash, herding, and irrational exuberance. Although such a term suggests that an event is inexplicably crowd-driven, what it really means, claims Peter Garber, is that we have grasped a near-empty explanation rather than expend the effort to understand the event.In this book Garber offers market-fundamental explanations for the three most famous bubbles: the Dutch Tulipmania (1634-1637), the Mississippi Bubble (1719-1720), and the closely connected South Sea Bubble (1720). He focuses most closely on the Tulipmania because it is the event that most modern observers view as clearly crazy. Comparing the pattern of price declines for initially rare eighteenth-century bulbs to that of seventeenth-century bulbs, he concludes that the extremely high prices for rare bulbs and their rapid decline reflects normal pricing behavior. In the cases of the Mississippi and South Sea Bubbles, he describes the asset markets and financial manipulations involved in these episodes and casts them as market fundamentals.

From late 2003 through mid-2005, a series of peaceful street protests toppled corrupt and undemocratic regimes in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan and ushered in the election of new presidents in all three nations. These movements-collectively known as the Color Revolutions-were greeted in the West as democratic breakthroughs that might thoroughly reshape the political terrain of the former Soviet Union. But as Lincoln A. Mitchell explains inThe Color Revolutions, it has since become clear that these protests were as much reflections of continuity as they were moments of radical change. Not only did these movements do little to spur democratic change in other post-Soviet states, but their impact on Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan themselves was quite different from what was initially expected. In fact, Mitchell suggests, the Color Revolutions are best understood as phases in each nation's long post-Communist transition: significant events, to be sure, but far short of true revolutions.The Color Revolutionsexplores the causes and consequences of all three Color Revolutions-the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan-identifying both common themes and national variations. Mitchell's analysis also addresses the role of American democracy promotion programs, the responses of nondemocratic regimes to the Color Revolutions, the impact of these events on U.S.-Russian relations, and the failed \"revolutions\" in Azerbaijan and Belarus in 2005 and 2006. At a time when the Arab Spring has raised hopes for democratic development in the Middle East, Mitchell's account of the Color Revolutions serves as a valuable reminder of the dangers of confusing dramatic moments with lasting democratic breakthroughs.

Mass mobilization is among the most dramatic and inspiring forces for political change. When ordinary citizens take to the streets in large numbers, they can undermine and even topple undemocratic governments, as the recent wave of peaceful uprisings in several postcommunist states has shown. However, investigation into how protests are organized can sometimes reveal that the origins and purpose of \"people power\" are not as they appear on the surface. In particular, protest can be used as an instrument of elite actors to advance their own interests rather than those of the masses. Weapons of the Wealthyfocuses on the region of post-Soviet Central Asia to investigate the causes of elite-led protest. In nondemocratic states, economic and political opportunities can give rise to elites who are independent of the regime, yet vulnerable to expropriation and harassment from above. In conditions of political uncertainty, elites have an incentive to cultivate support in local communities, which elites can then wield as a \"weapon\" against a predatory regime. Scott Radnitz builds on his in-depth fieldwork and analysis of the spatial distribution of protests to demonstrate how Kyrgyzstan's post-independence development laid the groundwork for elite-led mobilization, whereas Uzbekistan's did not. Elites often have the wherewithal and the motivation to trigger protests, as is borne out by Radnitz's more than one hundred interviews with those who participated in, observed, or avoided protests. Even Kyrgyzstan's 2005 \"Tulip Revolution,\" which brought about the first peaceful change of power in Central Asia since independence, should be understood as a strategic action of elites rather than as an expression of the popular will. This interpretation helps account for the undemocratic nature of the successor government and the 2010 uprising that toppled it. It also serves as a warning for scholars to look critically at bottom-up political change.

Worldwide, the indelible image of the Netherlands is the tulip. But the tulip is not alone: flowers of all kinds have long been a key part of both the Dutch identity and the Dutch economy, and inHolland Flowering, Andrew Gebhardt offers a dazzling tour of Dutch flower culture, from the earliest days of horticulture to attempts to grow bulbs on the moon.Building his account around the world's largest flower auction, Aalsmeer's, which is located near Amsterdam, Gebhardt links past and present, petals and painting, colonial trading and the European Union. The resulting book is as unusual as it is ambitious, full of insights into horticulture, the workings of markets, globalization, aesthetics, and Dutch popular culture.