Review of periodical literature for 2024: 1100–1500

This review surveys articles published in 2024 that engage with the economic and social history of the later middle ages (c.1100-1500).It reveals a field marked by methodological innovation, geographical breadth, and sustained engagement with major historiographical debates.Scholarship on crises such as plague, famine, and climate change continues to expand, with new quantitative and comparative approaches refining understandings of demographic and market responses.Studies of labour and wages, from the enforcement of post-Black Death legislation to analyses of in-kind remuneration and living standards, demonstrate the persistence of questions about work, value, and social hierarchy.Research on women's economic activity, including Mediterranean single women, Serbian craftswomen, queenship, and widowhood, underscores gender as a central analytical category in current economic history.At the same time, new work on oaths, debt litigation, and ecclesiastical economy bridges legal, social, and institutional history.The field's increasingly global scope is evident in comparative studies of monetization and trade in Japan, Bulgaria, and Western Europe, alongside innovative work on science, technology, and paper money in mediaeval China.Collectively, this scholarship confirms the vitality and diversity of late mediaeval studies, highlighting a discipline that continues to balance empirical rigour with conceptual breadth and global perspective.Firstly, scholarship on the Black Death and subsequent waves of pestilence in the late middle ages continues to expand rapidly, with work ranging from the medical humanities to cultural history.As ever, this area attracts a lot of attention from economic and social historians.Two particularly significant economic history contributions this year are those by Curtis and Slavin.Firstly, Curtis's survey of epidemic disease in the northern Low Countries before 1450 highlights both the richness and limitations of available evidence.Drawing together manorial, ecclesiastical, and civic sources, he reconstructs 10 identifiable epidemic outbreaks between 1350 and 1450, occurring with striking regularity at roughly decade-long intervals.His central claim is that these waves should not be understood as sudden 'shocks' but as expected, recurring phenomena incorporated into the rhythms of mediaeval life.By emphasizing recurrence rather than rupture, Curtis challenges models that treat plague as a disruptive force and instead situates it within long-term processes of demographic, social, and economic adjustment.He also stresses the growing potential