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I was playing Mount & Blade Warband after I came home from work today, and I wondered how much of a problem banditry was before industrialization given its prevalence in fantasy fiction. Was "We'll have our pay, or we'll have our fun!" a typical phrase before the Industrial Revolution and the modern nation-state? :p

Could the much smaller pre-modern economies even support a significant number of bandits on land? Were governments weak enough that there was a low enough risk to make banditry a viable career option? (Piracy may be a different issue, given treasure fleets and the fact that so much commerce travels on waterways)

I had Europe during the High Middle Ages in mind when writing the topic, but you can use any pre-industrial society. Any information on the Silk Road and Saharan trade routes would be valuable too.
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