It’s hard to say if anyone had freedoms at any time (From a solipsists’ POV, but that’s a whole another argument entirely).

It’s interesting that you mention that “it’s not necessarily a better world for everyone”. Sometimes it can be difficult to draw the line between “liberty and freedom” with “security and order”. Just how many rights should people have, without causing everyone else to live in fear of being robbed, murdered, etc.?

This is one of the reasons why many aspects of the law, history, etc. aren’t always black and white. And they are often looked at from a subjective, personal point of view, rather than believing everything you may learn in schools and current events among other things, to me, anyways.

It’s hard to guess whether people had more freedom a century or two ago versus today, without a time machine or a fountain of youth. When they wrote about all ‘men’ being created equal, of course, slavery was legal, women couldn’t vote, nor could people who didn’t own land or follow the proper religion … Borat would be right at home. But they didn’t have a record of every bank transaction, personal interaction, and so on. Most cell phones can be used to listen to a person while they’re turned off. Not that that’s necessarily evil if it means a better world for everybody, but that hasn’t been the case so far. And we’ve built much of the infrastructure to 1984.