Wasn't the demand for Tulips due to the greatest world power at the time, the Ottoman Sultanate, designating the Tulip as the imperial flower? The so-called Tulip era of Suleiman's court gave rise to the French nobility attempting to emulate the Ottomans, which later spread to the nouveau riche copying their betters.

The Tulip mania as a process continues to be instructive, as the traded commodity became tulip bulb, not even the flower itself. The folly of the mania is not the bubble itself, but the fascinating phenomena of men mortgaging futures, or rather potentials (i.e. bulbs), for the present. In essence, the Tulip futures market, as well as any commodity trading scheme, is a transfer of wealth from the future to the present.

It is interesting that the fleeting preference of one Ottoman Turk, a perceived sworn enemy to Christians, would so influence Christendom nearly a century after his death.