ABSTRACT
When future historians look back on witchcraft historiography as it has developed in recent decades it is likely that they will place it in the context of a reaction against the parochial tendencies of nineteenth-century positivism. This will look in vain for such misdescriptions of cultures and ages as can be detected in writers like Frazer and Tylor, or Lecky and Dickson White. They will find almost no attempts to analyse human society in terms of an opposition between reason and irrationality. And if they place the two historiographies in a comparative context they will no doubt find late-twentieth century scholarship, unlike that of the nineteenth century, conspicuous for its lack of self-confidence.
