Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Witch Hunts: From Salem to Guantanamo Bay
ISBN: 9780773577206
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / McGill-Queen''s University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Terrorism -- Prevention -- Political aspects -- United States; Judicial error -- History; Trials (Witchcraft) -- History;

Witch hunts are the products of intense fear and paranoia and the results are often terrible. The accused in three famous witchcraft cases - in Bamberg and Wurzburg, Germany, in Loudun, France, and in Salem, Massachusetts - were assumed to be guilty without proof. Secret accusations were accepted, evidence was falsified, and extreme pressures, including torture, were used. Arguing that fear was, and still is, a prerequisite to any witch hunt, Robert Rapley shows that the current hunt for terrorists mirrors the witch crazes of the past.

Robert Rapley is the author of A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier. A retired civil servant, he lives in Ottawa.Robert Rapley is the author of A Case of Witchcraft: The Trial of Urbain Grandier. A retired civil servant, he lives in Ottawa.