Hello synopsis

I can’t remember where I first heard about the Salem Witchcraft Trials, but as early as last year I recommended it to a friend for their Modern History personal interest project. My friend politely declined. Originally I was interested in the socio-cultural context of the time, but upon further reading I discovered that a core controversial issue surrounding the Salem event was one focusing on causation and the way historians have continued to rewrite the same history. As it exemplifies one of the key focus questions of the Extension History course, I decided that it was an appropriately complex and interesting topic for a Major Work, and so pursued this interest.

My essay begins with a postmodernist script of a hypothetical conversation between some historians, in order to highlight the diversity of historical interpretations of the same event. I then provide a brief overview of the Salem Witchtrials, and subsequently discuss some of the views of contemporary historians. However, the core of my essay focuses on mid-late twentieth century historians, the use of new types of evidence, interdisciplinary studies, and the way 'history' has continued to change over time. Through in-depth analysis of three modern historians, I evaluate the influence of personal and social context on the ongoing interpretations of the cause/s of the Salem hysteria.

The evidence cited in my essay comes from a variety of publications, predominantly from extracts in Frances Hill’s The Salem Witch Trials Reader. This text provided an outline essential to the understanding of historians ranging from contemporary Cotton Mather through to 1996, and it then allowed me to pursue further personal investigation into the featured historians (such as Boyer and Nissenbaum) and their approaches to history. The conflicting articles by Caporeal and Spanos, reproduced on the internet, were selected to demonstrate the way historical debate is generated. I have chosen not to discuss ‘poor’ historical interpretations (ie. Marion Starkey), as I feel they detract from the historical credibility of the causation debate.