Was Dutch tulip mania a nationwide financial disaster?

Tulip mania is one of history's most repeated cautionary tales. Tulip prices in parts of the Dutch Republic became the subject of striking transactions and contracts during the 1630s.

Some rare bulbs attracted extraordinary expectations, but the structure and enforceability of transactions remain important. The surviving prices and contracts are dramatic, but so is the mythology.

Later accounts often dramatized the event; the evidence does not justify portraying an entire national economy as ruined by bulbs. A small, intense market is not automatically a whole economy in collapse.

It is worth separating what documents say from what later storytellers added. Surviving price anecdotes should be checked against contract records and the social scale of participation.

What is the strongest documentary evidence that tulip speculation spilled into the wider Dutch economy?