European Price Revolutions

Medieval, early modern, eighteenth-century and twentieth-century periods of sustained inflation did not arise from a single cause. Population, harvests, energy supplies, monetary expansion, credit, state finance and international trade interacted differently in each era.

Price increases altered wages, rents, food security and political expectations. Periods of prolonged inflation were often followed by severe conflict and eventual stabilisation, although the timing and institutions varied across regions.

The Great Wave compares several centuries of evidence to propose recurring structures of price revolution, crisis and equilibrium without reducing history to a mechanically repeating cycle.