The Big Why

A question that has been haunting me - and many other better lerned minds, I am sure - for quite some time.

Why the classic liberal ideas were born and caught hold in Europe?

After all, the European society back then was far from open-minded and tolerant as we understand it today. Eretics were persecuted, homosexuals incarcerated, people of different skin colour regarded as inferior, kings were such due to divine right... yet the classic liberal ideas flourished.

And nowhere else.

It would be silly to look for a simplistic explanation made of one or two factors, I am sure.

Or in the end it was just chance, an accident of history?