The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of HistoryDavid Hackett Fischer, one of our most prominent historians, has garnered a reputation for making history come alive--even stories as familiar as Paul Revere's ride, or as complicated as the assimilation of British culture in North America. Now, in The Great Wave, Fischer has done it again, marshaling an astonishing array of historical facts in lucid and compelling prose to outline a history of prices--"the history of change," as Fischer puts it--covering the dazzling sweep of Western history from the medieval glory of Chartres to the modern day. Going far beyond the economic data, Fischer writes a powerful history of the people of the Western world: the economic patterns they lived in, and the politics, culture, and society that they created as a result. As he did in Albion's Seed and Paul Revere's Ride, two of the most talked-about history books in recent years, Fischer combines extensive research and meticulous scholarship with wonderfully evocative writing to create a book for scholars and general readers alike. Records of prices are more abundant than any other quantifiable data, and span the entire range of history, from tables of medieval grain prices to the overabundance of modern statistics. Fischer studies this wealth of data, creating a narrative that encompasses all of Western culture. He describes four waves of price revolutions, each beginning in a period of equilibrium: the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and finally the Victorian Age. Each revolution is marked by continuing inflation, a widening gap between rich and poor, increasing instability, and finally a crisis at the crest of the wave that is characterized by demographic contraction, social and political upheaval, and economic collapse. The most violent of these climaxes was the catastrophic fourteenth century, in which war, famine, and the Black Death devastated the continent--the only time in Europe's history that the population actually declined. Fischer also brilliantly illuminates how these long economic waves are closely intertwined with social and political events, affecting the very mindset of the people caught in them. The long periods of equilibrium are marked by cultural and intellectual movements--such as the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Victorian Age-- based on a belief in order and harmony and in the triumph of progress and reason. By contrast, the years of price revolution created a melancholy culture of despair. Fischer suggests that we are living now in the last stages of a price revolution that has been building since the turn of the century. The destabilizing price surges and declines and the diminished expectations the United States has suffered in recent years--and the famines and wars of other areas of the globe--are typical of the crest of a price revolution. He does not attempt to predict what will happen, noting that "uncertainty about the future is an inexorable fact of our condition." Rather, he ends with a brilliant analysis of where we might go from here and what our choices are now. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the state of the world today. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - Chalky - LibraryThingThis is a fascinating book that argues that there is a correlation between periods when prices rise quickly and periods of political and social instability. Economic history is a discipline that is ... Read full review
The great wave: price revolutions and the rhythm of history
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictFischer (Paul Revere's Ride, LJ 4/1/94) turns to economic concerns in this informative and readable history of price revolutions. The first revolution of which we have adequate record occurred in the ... Read full review
Contents
INTRODUCTION | 3 |
United States 19oo196o | 4 |
THE FIRST WAVE | 11 |
The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century | 35 |
THE SECOND WAVE | 65 |
The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century | 91 |
THE THIRD WAVE | 117 |
The Revolutionary Crisis | 142 |
Rising Home Prices 19661993 | 221 |
CONCLUSION | 235 |
APPENDICES | 259 |
E Cycles and Waves | 273 |
Interest Rates as Historical Indicators | 287 |
o7 Distribution of Wealth in America 16351995 | 299 |
Price Revolutions and Family Disintegration | 301 |
NOTES | 317 |
THE VICTORIAN EQUILIBRIUM | 156 |
The Equilibrium of the Victorian Era | 158 |
THE FOURTH WAVE | 179 |
o8 Price Movements and World War I 19141918 | 192 |
The Troubles of Our Time | 203 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 363 |
Secondary Sources | 406 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 503 |
Other editions - View all
The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History David Hackett Fischer Limited preview - 1996 |
The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History David Hackett Fischer No preview available - 1996 |
The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History David Hackett Fischer No preview available - 1996 |
Common terms and phrases
Abel annual appeared became began Black Death Britain Cambridge capital caused commodity consumer prices crime crisis cultural cycles decline demographic E. A. Wrigley early Economic History Review economists eighteenth century England English European evidence famine fell fifteenth Figure Florence fluctuations fourteenth century France French Germany gold harvest historians Historical Statistics History Review 2d hyperinflation idem income increased inequality inflation interest rates Italy Kondratieff late London long wave major Medieval Price Revolution modern monetarist monetary money supply nations nineteenth century nomic Paris pattern peasants percent period Phelps-Brown Pistoia political price history price movements Price Revolution Prices and Wages problem production rapidly real wages Renaissance rents returns to labor rising prices rose scholars secular trend seventeenth century siecle silver similar sixteenth century social stability theory tion twentieth century United Victorian equilibrium Victorian era vols W. G. Hoskins wealth western world wheat York
Popular passages
Page 501 - The Relation between Unemployment and the Rate of Change of Money Wage Rates in the United Kingdom, 1861-1957," Economica (November 1958), pp.
Page 497 - Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1976), p.