The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History is a scholarly work by historian David Hackett Fischer, published in 1996 by Oxford University Press.

Hackett Fischer identified three complete monetary waves in European history, each consisting of a price revolution, featuring high inflation, followed by a war crisis, followed by a new equilibrium.

Chronologically, these were; 1), prolonged prosperity, 2) political disorder, 3) inflation spiral, 4) spiritual crisis, 5) revolution, deflation, 6) long era of equilibrium.p237 Fischer predicted (1996) that “the price revolution of the 20th century has yet to reach its climax”.p240 Recent works by Steven Pinker[2] and Joshua S Goldstein[3] suggest that war and violence are decreasing, a trend which seems at odds with some of Fisher”s conclusions.

Fischer did remind his readers that volatility would occur and increase Paul Krugman[4] offers the comment that “most big-think books about history offer only strained analogies mixed with pretentious statements of the obvious.” Thomas J Archdeacon[5] calls the theory “vivid”, “shrewd” and “strongly persuasive”, but suspects it is “blood in the water for academic sharks hunting outsiders venturing into their territory.” The argument that the world is heading for a crisis “has the vagueness of analogy.” In a long and detailed review, John H Munro of Toronto university [6] deplores the absence of mathematical modeling; the theory is “rather too neat” for him to accept.

[7] On the other hand, in the wake of the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic over 2020-21, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the 2024 United States Presidential election, Fisher's argument that the west is heading for a crisis appears more convincing.