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. |
Contents
3 | |
11 | |
20 | |
The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century | 35 |
THE SECOND WAVE | 65 |
Io Prices and Coinage of Money in France | 83 |
The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century | 91 |
THE EQUILIBRIUM OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT | 102 |
Io Deflation Depression and World War II 19201945 | 196 |
The Troubles of Our Time | 203 |
I6 The Price of Fuel Oil in the United States 19601992 | 209 |
CONCLUSION | 235 |
APPENDICES | 259 |
E Cycles and Waves | 273 |
Interest Rates as Historical Indicators | 287 |
Price Revolutions and Family Disintegration | 301 |
THE THIRD WAVE | 117 |
The Fall of Real Wages | 133 |
The Revolutionary Crisis | 142 |
I5 Revolution and the Price of Bread in Paris 17881790 | 147 |
The Equilibrium of the Victorian Era | 158 |
THE FOURTH WAVE | 179 |
NOTES | 317 |
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 - 1999 |
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 Agricultural American Annales E.S.C. appeared began Black Death Britain British Cambridge caused commodity consumer prices crime crisis cultural cycles d'Histoire decline demographic E. A. Wrigley Economic Growth Economic History Review économique economists eighteenth century England English Ernest Labrousse Essays Europe European evidence famine Fernand Braudel fluctuations fourteenth century France French Germany historians Historical Statistics History of Prices History Review 2d hyperinflation idem income increased inequality inflation interest rates Journal of Economic Kondratieff labor late Löhne London Long Waves Lyman L monetarist monetary nations nomic Oxford Past & Present pattern percent period Pistoia political population prèzzi price history price movements Price Revolution Prices and Wages problem real wages Renaissance rents rose Rural secular trend seventeenth century siècle Paris silver sixteenth century social surged theory tion twentieth century United Victorian equilibrium vols W. G. Hoskins wealth XVIe XVIIIe siècle York