Review of periodical literature for 2024: 1500–1700

Early modern economic and social historians carried on in 2024, seemingly undeterred by a spate of dispiriting global developments.Morshed contributed to debates about early modern state capacity and state formation through a study of Mughal responses to internal rebellions.Morshed reconstructed the factors that prompted the Mughals to reconcile with and forgive rebels -a regular occurrence that might be regarded as 'a part of state policy ' (p.65).This strategy minimized the costs involved in suppressing rebellions and facilitated the maintenance of state revenue.It also reflected a reliance on (potentially rebellious) intermediaries who performed important administrative and managerial functions in the provinces.If such negotiations between the centre and periphery imposed certain constraints on Mughal rule, they also facilitated the development of a state that was sufficiently 'resilient' to weather a range of internal and external challenges.This, for Morshed, indicates that the empire's eventual decline cannot be attributed to some 'inherent flaw' in its 'institutional design' but rather should be explained with reference to a wider range of factors (p.85).Examining Portugal (c.1367-1844), Freire Costa, Henriques, and Palma offered a new method for measuring state capacity, suggesting the need to consider a wider range of variables -particularly local revenue and the ends to which it was directed.Portugal's fiscal capacity not only was respectable in comparison to that of other European states during the early modern period but also increased prior to the nineteenth century.They noted that Portuguese fiscal capacity did not rest entirely on colonial revenue, that domestic taxes were more important than previously assumed, and that such taxes were subsequently expended on public works which had the potential to enhance economic development, state administration, and so forth.Ultimately, Freire Costa, Henriques and Palma argued that factors other than low state capacity account for Portugal's 'dismal economic performance' over the long run (p.470).Multiple articles addressed wages and inequality.Carvalhal, Lucassen and De Zwert examined real wages in India from c. 1500 to 1650.Their analysis used a new dataset of 2,710 separate observations related to over 76,000 paid-out wages, taken from nine cities on the west coast which were where Portuguese Estado da ndia outposts were located.These reported wages were 'deflated by rice prices and a basket of goods' and, the authors suggested, 'imply low and declining standards