Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom

196 • Towards a Worldwide Index of Human Freedom
concede relatively safe property rights to merchants. If merchants were
robbed by some European prince, they could avoid and circumvent his
territory in future. Merchants preferred routes through safe territory over
alternative routes. Income from protection fees or taxes strengthened less
kleptocratic rulers over their more kleptocratic rivals. Successful strategies
of taxation and rule provide an example for other rulers to imitate.
That is why safe property rights could spread through time and space in
Western Europe.
As underlined by Weber (1922/1964), Europe differed from the great
Asian civilizations by having a large number of autonomous cities where
individual liberty, economic freedom, and even political freedom were
established earlier and for the benefit of a larger part of the population
than elsewhere in traditional societies. European cities were fortresses of
liberty. Schmidt und Dirlmeier make the following comment on southern
German and northern Italian cities in the Middle Ages: “Towns attracted
unskilled workers from the countryside and skilled workers from other
towns with the guarantee of personal liberty, fiscal incentives and superior
income chances” (1998: 158). Communities defended individual liberty
in European cities. In Asia, inhabitants of big cities remained subservient
to rulers. The existence of autonomous cities in Europe also improved
the conditions of life for peasants. The possibility of exit limited abuse by
rulers. According to Volkart, “Peasants simply did not have to go that far
to find an authority which offered a different and possibly better set of
rights, and rulers had to grant favourable conditions if they did not want
to lose them. In my opinion it was therefore not by pure chance that in
Renaissance Germany prosperity grew with political fragmentation, especially
where this became greatest, that is, in the southwest. And it was not
by chance either that it was just this area where peasants were sometimes
represented at the local diets” (1998: 178).
Palmer also summarizes the importance of cities for the evolution of
the West very well: “The cities of Europe were islands of freely organized
production and exchange protected by walls that were built to exclude
the practitioners of violence and theft. As a fortified place—a Burg—a
city made possible the freedom of the Bürger. The new cities of Europe
were generally places of trade and commerce, rather than administrative
centers of vast empires, centers of religious cults, or centers of exploitative
rule over subject peasant populations.... Serfs or vassals who could make it
to a city and live there for a year and a day were freed of feudal obligations
and would be defended by the city” (2009: 18). Jenner compares the situation
in Europe with China: “The weakness of medieval European monarchies
that allowed cities to select their own governments and to bargain
with the king would have shocked a Song official’s sense of a well-ordered
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