The timeline above shows when particular historians wrote their works on witchcraft. These well-known monographs were carefully picked for this project from the plethora of works on witchcraft based on their influential scholarly contribution. The specific monographs cover witchcraft in the colonies. Most monographs on witchcraft cover the colonies by solely looking at Salem, Massachusetts' case of 1692 and 1693. This project seeks to look at the whole Colonial British American witchcraft cases rather than focusing on one hot spot.
This timeline is here because it is important to know and understand the historiography of witchcraft in order to fully understand witchcraft. Click on the magnifying (-) button to see all the works in one frame. There are a few trends that occur within historical witchcraft research. First, historians are focusing on the records. Who involved in the case, when was the case, and what happened within the case was the main concern. This moved to studying various places and times of witchcraft within the colonies. By the 1970's, gender became a major role within works. It became important to include women because many contended that without women's history we could not fully know men in history. Then we come to the end of the timeline. The last monographs are a mix of approaches. These last monographs analyze the primary source detail, look at particular places and then look at the broad, and finally they on look at multiple causes of witchcraft. Many include gender, politics, economy, and religion in their work. Historian's begin to realize that the topic of witchcraft was not caused by one thing and that to understand the topic, historian's had to research multiple causes to form a cohesive image of Colonial British America's witchcraft.