You speak as if dominating the Muggles is somehow the natural decision for wizards to take in the 1600s -- that because wizards can dominate Muggles, they obviously would, and that it took unrealistic levels of moral goodness to reject that path. Ergo you conclude wizards couldn't dominate Muggles after all.

But this all ignores a key fact: motivation. You're thinking like a Muggle. Muggles have clear motives for dominating other Muggles: it increases your access to natural resources and manpower.

This clearly doesn't apply to wizards. Wizards have no need for the natural resources Muggles use. Nor do they have any need for Muggle labour. What possible motivation could wizards have for deciding to take over the Muggles? Muggles have nothing that wizards want, and the Muggles of the 1600s even less so. Those few things that maybe wizards could end up wanting (e.g. food, if wizards don't have any farms of their own) they can trade for easily enough under secrecy, without revealing that they are wizards.

Anyway, there are absolutely zero advantages to wizards staying in the open, ruling Muggles or not. While Muggles have nothing wizards want, wizards have many things Muggles want (cures to all their diseases, for example). That means that wizards are never going to be left alone by Muggles, but Muggles have nothing of value to trade in exchange for wizards' services.

On the other hand, going into hiding and living in secret means you're free from all of that. You can live independently and freely without being pestered. If you ever want to interact with Muggles you can, so long as you don't reveal that you're a wizard. And you can still control the Muggle world whenever it suits you, such as in HBP when the magical government rearranged a phone call between two Muggle heads of state without their consent.

The occasional unprepared/underage wizard or witch being successfully executed for witchcraft is only going to help that along, but I doubt that it was the deciding factor. Probably more of a useful rhetorical point to convince people in the public debate preceding secrecy. You can see it now:

Wizard A: "The Muggles have nothing we want, and they're always coming to us for help! Remember when King Charles wanted us to defend him from Cromwell? No more, I say! We wizards gain nothing from fighting these wars for Muggles! Let us separate ourselves from them, once and for all!"

Wizard B: "We have a responsibility to help them! We were born superior to them, and that means we have the moral responsibility to aid our less fortunate cousins. We can do so much good for them - we can do so much good together. Think of what wizards and Muggles could achieve with cooperation!"

Wizard A: "Cooperation? HA! The Muggles don't want your help, you fool. They just want to burn you at the stake. No, I refuse to go out of my way to help those who would kill me if they had the chance. Let the Muggles rot in their own filth, I say!"

TLDR: "wizards in the open" has only downsides, "wizards in secret" has only upsides.

 

I think you missed that I am asking first why witch-hunts happened in Harry Potter's world. That was never answered in canon as far as I know. One can however extrapolate reasons for them from canon. That in turn has consequences for other historical happenings in HP, such as the statue of secrecy without changing how canon events, just why they happened.

---------- Post automerged at 09:18 ---------- Previous post was at 09:11 ----------

Then why didn't that happen a lot sooner? Why did they wait thousands of years to go into hiding? What made the 18th century so special?

 

17th century, not 18th. Statute of Secrecy was 1689.

Quidditch through the Ages answers your question. The Statute of Secrecy was merely a formalisation of a trend that had been going on for hundreds of years. By the time the Statute was passed, wizards had already all but completely removed themselves from Muggle society.

One can imagine events of the 1600s helping it along, though.

The English civil war was 1642-1651. I always find it suspicious that the statute of secrecy was passed so soon after that. It's also in this era that we see the "Warlock's Council" disappear and the Ministry of Magic form. My own headcanon is that the civil war led to the dissolution of the Warlock's Council and the creation of the Ministry of Magic.

We also know that obliviation was discovered in this period by Mnemone Radford (1562-1649), so you can imagine that before this time there would have been little point in making secrecy a formal law rather than the social convention it was.

 

I'm not sure if you're trolling, or just stupid.

I think you're getting fanon and canon confused. Canonically, Slytherin disliked muggle-born students (he called them "untrustworthy") and didn't want them at Hogwarts, but there's no evidence in canon that he, or anyone else at the time, actively hunted muggles and muggleborns like the modern pureblood supremacists you're referring to. In CoS, Binns tells of a legend that the Chamber was created to purge the school of muggleborns, but it's not clear where that legend originates from - it could very well just be a legacy of Riddle's initial use of the Chamber in the '50s. At any rate, his views were unpopular - he was forced out of the school because of them - which suggests that they were uncommon as well. The current attitude towards muggles and muggleborns likely stems from centuries of isolation following the enactment of the Statute of Secrecy, as well as lingering resentment over witch hunts (which, contrary to what you say, did in fact kill many wizards), both of which occurred long after Slytherin's death.

Assuming that any of the muggles caught in the witch hunts were even set up by wizards, there was no official governing body in place at the time to take charge of hunting them down. The Ministry of Magic was formed immediately prior to the signing of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692. And even if a vigilante body was formed to stop the framing of muggles, I can't see it being all that effective. Given the number of magical children caught in witch hunts, I would bet than any framings were more likely the doing of family members out for revenge rather than individuals or groups looking for sport. In cases like that, you'd have an endless supply of perpetrators, a laundry list of suspects, and very little sympathy for the victims. This makes it difficult to catch the culprit, and even if he is caught, another one will spring up to take his place.

 

I think it's fair to say that anti-Muggle sentiment has peaked and waned over the years several times. However, we know from Pottermore that Voldemort's radical pro-pureblood philosophy is something that didn't really take off until the 20th century:

This makes sense, as Voldemort's approach to Muggleborns is obviously a "Nazis and the Jews" parallel. Radical nationalism developed in the Muggle world in the 20th century, and it happened in the wizarding world 20 years later.

 

How would the civil war lead to the dissolution of the Warlock's Council if the wizards had already all but removed themselves from normal society?

---------- Post automerged at 10:27 ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 ----------

Anti-semitism has been around for hundreds of years before the nazis. Pogroms were happening regularily in eastern europe, and back during the crusades jews were massacred for being jews. Jews had been subject to special restrictions in many countries into the 19th century.

Is there any information about the frequency of dark wizards before the 20th century?

 

You're thinking too much in absolutes. We know that most wizards generally avoided regular contact with Muggles. That leaves plenty of room for a certain level of interaction.

Wizards removing themselves from day to day interaction with Muggles does not mean the Muggles instantly forget that they exist. This would be especially true of the educated classes who pass on knowledge in a formal way i.e. the aristocracy. We know that for a long time wizards were part of the King's court - the Malfoys came over with William the Conqueror, for example.

It's also likely that some wizards would continue to interact with Muggles to one extent or another. The Pottermore entry for the Malfoys implies that they had dealings with Muggles right up to the passing of the Statute of Secrecy.

Now, to head into headcanon territory, my view is that the Warlock's Council was a part of the King's Privy Council, and thus essentially:

a) royalist
b) a formal connection between Muggle and magical worlds

With the English civil war and the execution of King Charles I, this pro-Muggle royalist faction of wizards were defeated and the separation of worlds accelerated.

Edit for your edit:

Again, you're thinking in absolutes. It's not a case of "no discrimination against Jews" vs. "discrimination against Jews". There are all sorts of levels. The kind of anti-Semitism that arose in Nazi Germany was of a different sort to the anti-Semitism of years past. It was a formalised national agenda pursued with industrial efficiency and rationalised with the tools of modernity.

That was what made it radical anti-Semitism. It was tied in with the central, secular, political philosophy of the day, not a result of religion or superstition or mob scapegoating.

There was a reason I used the word "radical" in my post. I don't stick extra words in there just for fun.

Only that they existed, that Voldemort was the first of them to call fashion himself "the Dark Lord", and that Voldemort was apparently the worst of them.

 

Wouldn't the wizards of that council have supported Charles's son, who later took the throne? And how likely was it that the roundheads had wizard support themselves since they managed to defeat the royalists? Even a single wizard could have tipped many a battle by spying, controlling or taking out key leaders or even just instant communication with other allies.

 

I don't know why you're pursuing this line of questioning, as it's completely fanon. Nothing we say on this topic has any authority because it's all speculation and made up. If you really want to know the full details of my fanon ideas regarding the magical involvement in the English civil war and its consequences for the magical world, read the document I linked above (in post 24) which talks about it in detail. See also chapter one of my fanfic The One He Feared, in particular the scene including an excerpt from Brandon Swann's journal.

 

You're missing my point: The anti-semitism of the nazis was based on a long and wide-spread history of anti-semitism in Europe. They didn't invent it. Using that example, Voldemort could have been using a similar history of bigotry and hatred towards normal people. The question is, was that the case?

 

You're missing my point, I believe.

Yes, anti-Semitism existed before the Nazis. This anti-Semitism was largely inconsistent and based on religious superstition. There was no systematic hunting down and killing of Jews as a national policy. Being anti-Jew was never part of a country's core beliefs.

Rather, there were occasional anti-Jew pogroms in reaction to various events in which the people looked for a scapegoat and their superstition (not to mention their financial debts) provided the Jews as a target. But for the most part, Jews were tolerated and occasionally even welcomed into society. Their ability to lend money made them useful. It was only when bad things started happening that people remembered their superstitions and formed a mob.

The Nazis completely transformed this. They took a casual superstition and turned it into a grand conspiracy, incorporated that conspiracy into their central ideology then used it to systematically persecute an entire people. That is, the Nazis took a superstition and radicalised it into a nationalistic philosophy.

What I'm saying is that this is exactly the same as Muggleborns in canon.

Yes, Voldemort used a similar history of bigotry and hatred towards "normal people" aka Muggles (still don't know why you refuse to use the correct term) and Muggleborns. We know for a fact that at least some people disliked Muggleborns for centuries, because of Salazar Slytherin. I'm saying this is exactly the same kind of superstition as anti-Semitism: historically inconsistent and largely tangential to central political ideas and debates.

Then Voldemort comes along and radicalises the idea, turning it into a nationalistic philosophy and endorsing a systematic persecution of Muggleborns. He makes it political.

 

So, in your opinion it is likely that normal people suffered from such hatred, as jews had suffered from hatred throughout the Ages? It would mean witch-hunting was not based (at least not fully) on superstition as in the real world, but was (at least partially) a reaction to attacks against normal people by magicals. (And likely to spawn cycles of violence, where a parent of a magical child harmed by normal kids takes revenge, which causes more "revenge" and so on.)

One would wonder how the existence of magic got forgotten with such history behind it though.

 

Er, what? None of that is implied at all. You're intent on inserting this one idea into canon and will use any event to justify it.

It's inevitable, pre-secrecy, that on occasion altercations would happen between wizards and Muggles.

But the witch trials were not about that. Historically, someone was accused of being a witch after they tried to help someone and that help failed. E.g. your son is sick, you invite the local woman known for healing to help him, but the son dies anyway. You accuse the woman of being a witch.

It wasn't being a witch that was persecuted, it was the impression that the witch had deliberately pretended to help while actually causing harm. From Wikipedia:

That is, it's the age-old need to blame someone for something that was random.

Next time you refuse to use the word Muggle I'm not going to reply.

Incidentally, the anti-Semitism parallel is to Muggleborns, not Muggles themselves.

 

So, you don't really think that the fact that magic, witches, wizards and curses are real would change anything with regards to the witch-hunts?

If in a SciFi setting, aliens were real and would be able to kidnap, experiment on, and return people, would you still think everyone who claims to have been abducted was lieing, or delusional?

---------- Post automerged at 12:29 ---------- Previous post was at 12:25 ----------

Wouldn't that be a logical question if magic actually worked and witches could easily cure many ills with the wave of a wand or a potion, yet somehow failed in some cases?

Or in other words - if someone in the real world tries to kill another by cursing them with black magic, we can laugh at it. If black magic is a real thing, only fools laugh at such a threat.

Magic being real changes a lot.

 

Magic being real changes nothing, because the whole concept of the HP world is that it's our world.

Wizards didn't edit history when the Statute of Secrecy came into effect. They left the Muggles with all their legends of dragons and fairies and wizards. They simply removed all the evidence that would make people think their stories were true, rather than the fanciful imaginings of their ancestors.

The real world records we have of witch trials are accurate for the HP world too, because the HP world takes place within the real world. The only difference between the real world and the HP world is that in the HP world some of those accused of being witches actually had magical powers.

 

Give up Taure, he's not getting it.

 

Why things happened as they did is is the whole point. Were the witch-hunts rational (for their time) investigations that led to the death of thousands of innocents due to torture being used as a tool of interrogation, or where they a genocidal attempt to wipe out witches and wizards? Or something in between?

The final war between Rome and Carthage was genocidal, but the two powers had clashed twice before, and Rome had narrowingly avoided destruction at the hands of Hannibal in the second punic war, which played a major role in their decision to utterly destroy the city in the third war.

"Wiping out godless heathen witches" and "Making sure those evil witches cannot curse us or our children anymore" are two slightly different different motivations for the same (evil) goal.

 

You're not listening -_- Muggles didn't have an objection to witches in principle. Witches were a part of normal life. They had an objection to the idea of the dark arts (for lack of a better word).

(Of course church authorities objected to witchcraft in principle, but the pagan customs of the general people were notoriously resistant to Christianisation).

Witch trials were attempts to target specific individuals perceived to have done wrong, not an attempt to kill witches in general.

Most of the time those individuals had done nothing wrong and were just scapegoats (in HP terms, see Dumbledore's quote about how magical people offering help to Muggles were considered to be putting themselves into a dangerous situation). It's possible that some of them had deliberately brought about harm, however.

There is no general motive to be ascribed.