The latter argues that some of the women accused of witchcraft were not the passive recipients of an appellation bestowed on them by others, but actively chose to be witches. If, however, he had let his eyes stray as far as Chapter 4 and Chapter 6 of The Witch in History, he would have seen that the former argues that while some accused witches were getting money or food(begging), as many, or more were giving gifts and returning borrowed items, and I argue that this suggests a different interpretation of such exchanges than the one advanced by Thomas.

Instead of arguing in a straightforward and manly fashion that Sir Keith is empirically wrong, it seems, I wickedly suggest that his comprehensive lack of interest in the question of gender in early modern witchcraft might have some connection with his tendency to portray witches themselves as disempowered beggars. After all, I disagree fairly sharply with Keith Thomas, and what is worse, I don't keep the rules while doing so. In The Witch in History, Chapter 3, he must have thought he had found a beauty. Like all who argue in defence of something, Evans badly needs to manufacture an aggressor. Any resemblance between my work and claims made about it by Evans is purely coincidental, but of course one simply must have grist for the conservative argufying machine, otherwise, I suppose, redundancy would truly beckon. It would indeed be hilarious if I thought that what I actually say is that conservative defenders of history often sound as if they believe that poststructuralism will make them unemployed. 4, Evans claims that I say that poststructuralism 'threatens to throw historians out of work'. Or not even that the most annoying ideas that can be manufactured from a careless reading of their writing will also do. For the rabble of 'feminist' and 'postmodern' historians, a quick skim over their most immediately annoying ideas will do. For a man passionately keen to argue that historians must judiciously evaluate all available evidence and refrain from going beyond it into speculation, Evans seems strikingly reluctant to use this august methodology on his hapless victims. If only he had expended equal energy reading chapters 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and even 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, his reading of Chapter 3 might have looked rather different. In his book In Defence of History, Richard Evans compliments me with a number of citations and a lengthy discussion of Chapter 3 of my book The Witch in History. To be discussed without being read, however, is rather different. In this age of information explosion, I suppose we must all grow used to being cited without being read, at least by undergraduates.

Richard j evans in defense of history