 As educated elites in Western societies increasingly rejected the efficacy of magical practices, legal systems ceased to threaten practitioners of magical activities with punishment for the crimes of diabolism and witchcraft, and instead threatened them with the accusation that they were defrauding people through promising to provide things which they could not.This spread of European colonial power across the world influenced how academics would come to frame the concept of magic.In the nineteenth century, a number of scholars adopted the traditional, negative concept of magic.