Major Work One: COMPLETE!

A Delusion Of Satan?


SYNOPSIS
I can’t recall 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 area of study.

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 article by Caporael, and subsequent reference to the conflicting articles by Spanos and Gottlieb, reproduced on the internet, were selected to demonstrate the way historical debate is generated. All together they promote the diversity of the causation debate in an interesting and engaging way.

ESSAY:

Analyse different opinions on the cause/s of the Salem witch trials. How and why has this event been interpreted differently? What do these differences reveal about the nature of history and causation?

A hypothetical conversation between some Salem Witch Trial historians:
Mather: ‘The Salem witch trials were evidently inflicted from the demons of the invisible world.’
Hutchinson: ‘Hold up. As a man of the Enlightenment, I must inform you that there are no such things as demons. The ‘Afflicted’ were altogether guilty of fraud and imposture.’
Boyer: ‘That’s far too simple a deduction. Economic and philosophical factionalism between Salem Town and Salem Village allowed for the trials to escalate as they did.’
Nissenbaum:3‘Exactly. With a lack of autonomy and power in town politics, the trials provided opportunities for the pro-Parris faction to treat the others not as political opposition, but as morally defective individuals.’
Carporael: ‘Well I think it was a physiological condition, like convulsive Ergotism.’
Spanos: ‘Stupid woman! You and Matossian provide no conclusive evidence! Gottlieb and I show the trials can clearly be accounted for within a social psychological framework.’
Kences: ‘The importance of the wars between the New Englanders and the native Indians cannot be underestimated either.’
Hansen: ‘Oh…well I thought they really were witches…’

Through the convolution of centuries of historical discussion, it is evident that the study of history is a malleable concept. After all, one of the largest issues surrounding historical debates is the different portrayals of history through time. How is it that one event can cause such conflict and diverse argument? What has allowed historians to continually re-write history? Through examining different interpretations on the controversial topic of the causes of the Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692, I hope to shed some light on why establishing causation is so difficult, and how and why historians can write about the same event in radically different ways.
In the winter of 1691/92, two young Puritan girls began suffering from disorderly speech, odd postures, and convulsive fits in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, New England. In the space of less than two years, nineteen had been hanged, an elderly man crushed to death, five had died in prison and over one-hundred and fifty persons left incarcerated . However, Witch-hunts were by no means an unfamiliar concept. Tens of thousands of people in Europe and European colonies had died at the stake or gallows between 1400 and 1650. What makes the Salem trials one of the most universally famous and fascinating is that it happened when and where it did; yet its root causes continue to baffle historians.

Contemporary historians, such as Cotton Mather, viewed the events through the narrow scope of Puritan theology, where what couldn’t be rationally explained was attributed to “horrid sorcerers and hellish conjurers” and “demons of the invisible world” . In the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Thomas Hutchinson stated “A little attention must force conviction that the whole was a scene of fraud and imposture.” Both views are one-dimensional and easily placed within a specific social and historical-school-of-thought context. Nonetheless, it is important to remember that what they wrote left a basis for future historians to debate, investigate and improve on.

It is through twentieth century historians, however, that we see the spectrum of causation theories increasing. Burgeoning technologies, significant development in medical knowledge, and the expansion of ‘new-history’ and inter-disciplinary studies, have all allowed for causation debates to be kept alive. This is not to say that it has made determining the cause of the Salem Witch Trials any easier. Winfield S. Nevins perhaps best reveals the implicit uncertainties of modern historians:

‘I must confess to a measure of doubt as to the moving causes of this terrible tragedy. It seems impossible to believe the tithe of the statements which were made at the trials. And yet it is equally difficult to say that nine out of every ten men, women and children who testified upon their oaths, intentionally and wilfully falsified.’

Hundreds of affidavits and court documents remain today, but the impossibility of demonic intervention in a modern context requires historians to read beyond the written evidence. The social and historical context must be taken into account in order to speculate on causation. The myriad of modern interpretations that exist are predominantly born from focusing on different aspects of context alone as a means of explaining the written record; this is why I believe that establishing an extensive knowledge of the social circumstances of an epoch is an essential aspect of any valid historians work. Understanding Salem in 1692 is no exception. As a New England colony comprised of Puritan settlers, it is important to understand their religious worldview. However, aspects of colonial Massachusetts that have been deemed important by modern historians include not only religion, but social and political factionalism between Salem Village and Salem Town, effects of Indian Wars, smallpox epidemics, ergotism, psychological frameworks and the ethnicity of slave Tituba. Not only do these specific enquiries aid in attempting to explain the written testimony, they attempt to answer the causative question of ‘why Salem?’.

One of the most influential interpretations of this type is found in the collaborative work of American historians Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum. Their paper Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft is the second, and most extensive, of the three papers they co-wrote . They propose that the trials were the outcome, at a fundamental level, of ongoing conflict between Salem Town and Salem Village in a ‘convergence of a specific and unlikely combination of historical circumstances at this particular time and place.’ Explained simply, the trials were the ‘ephemera’ of a bitter and drawn-out factionalist dispute between the religious, but relatively politically powerless, Puritans of Salem Village, and the entrepreneurial merchant capitalists of Salem Town. It was as much a political conflict as it was a religious one, a fight between the old and the new, and it was one that had been brewing for years aided by the physical setting and vacillating Boston authorities.

Boyer and Nissenbaum explained how their theory was born in the preface to Salem Possessed. During the autumn of 1969 the two were organising a new course to be taught at the University of Massachusetts, with Salem Witchcraft at its core; “New Approaches to the Study of History”. During this time they discovered that a large proportion of primary evidence pre-dating the events of 1692 had never been studied by historians . Amongst these were lists of community votes, tax assessments, petitions ‘which provided almost a roll-call breakdown of divisions within the community’ , a previously ignored volume of Reverend Samuel Parris’ sermons which provided a commentary of the towns’ problems, and a supplementary body of family materials (wills, deeds, estates, law suits). Accumulated, they provide overwhelming evidence for a pre-existing social issue that had been acknowledged, but not sufficiently investigated.
All of this adds a new dynamic to the process of re-writing history. What had previously been deemed as unimportant by historians was suddenly of immense value to those working post-Annales. Why the sudden interest in these demographic and documentary sources? The historians themselves provide the answer.

‘It is only recently that historians (ourselves among them) have begun more fully to realize how much information the study of “ordinary” people living in “ordinary” communities can bring to the most fundamental historical questions’

Through their thorough methodical investigation of these new sources, Boyer and Nissenbaum have been able to make a valid, logical hypothesis that is backed by the historical record. Clearly influenced by Annales historiography and the detailed study of local history, the two are able to place the entire Salem event within its own historical and social context, as opposed to in a modern one. The hunts occurred in Salem as a result of Puritanist expression, and were elevated by the specific context of the area.

Further expanding on the work of Boyer and Nissenbaum is James Kences, who attempts to explain the psychological factors present in the community, and the affect this had on the ‘afflicted’ girls. After summing up his theory he writes “The 1692 witch hunt was very much a product of King William’s War, which seems not only to have exacerbated village factionalism, but to have promoted the further alienation of Salem Village from Salem Town” . His work makes explicit the importance of using other historians’ work when it comes to creating your own. Without his synthesis with Boyer and Nissenbaum’s work, his hypothesis may have lacked sufficient basis and been discredited. Instead it is a valid and thoroughly fascinating response to the ever changing historical climate and approach to sources.

Kences’ work has the impressive title of ‘Some Unexplored Relationships of Essex County Witchcraft to the Indian Wars of 1675 and 1687’ , and the basis for his argument is derived from the fact that to the New Englanders, Indians were synonymous with witchcraft . At the time the lives of the people of colonial Massachusetts were dominated by their relationships with the natives. Drawing from historical documentation not only from Salem, but from the surrounding area, Kences is able to retrace the origins of the afflicted girls and makes a startling observation; nearly all of them had either been displaced by Indian attack or had family members killed in them. He then notes that “Essex County had already displayed signs of what social psychologists refer to as “invasion neurosis”, the extreme tension of anticipating an attack which does not materialise.”

Kences’ hypothesis is interesting because it combines the context of the time with modern medical explanations of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and hysteria, and reflects the different ways history can be approached over time. Increasing knowledge about the psyche and the effect of trauma on the individual and the community has allowed Kences to approach the issue of causation in a radically new way. The only problem with psychological explanations is that it is impossible to ever prove them. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t any credibility to the claims, but it does further serve to cloud the issue of causation.

Some historians have also chosen to explore completely new avenues of historical methodology, combining the disciplines of historical research with modern knowledge of disease and physiology. One such example of this is Linnda Carporael’s 1976 paper ‘Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?’, in which she explores the ‘potential existence of physical pathology’ and makes an argument in favour of convulsive ergotism induced via the ingestion of infected rye. Caporael originally studied psychology, as well as human ethology at College, and is a behavioural scientist. She says “the complexity of the psychological and social factors in the community” meant physiological origins were dismissed without investigation. Through the use of diaries, maps, geographical knowledge, close examination of the court documents and descriptions of the afflicted however, she is able to re-interpret the ‘so-called delusional testimony’ as evidence of ergotism.

Caporael’s interest in pursuing this theory is reflective of her educational background, and demonstrates the importance of cross-disciplinary studies in historical research. The hypothesis is fascinating not only because of its basis, but because through it Caporael attempts to tackle one of the central reliability issues of the Trials- the evidence we have written by the actual participants and their descriptions of the ‘afflicted girls’. Whilst Caporael acknowledges “No single explanation can ever account for the delusion” , she argues “Combinations of interpretations..seem insufficient without some reasonable justification for the initially afflicted girls behaviour” . She couldn’t be more correct. Almost the entire causation debate revolves around this particular point.

However, Brian Pavlac explains the need for “scientific” theories aptly. ‘This interpretation satisfies an understandable desire for removing human responsibility for the hunts.’ It’s almost a new-age way of blaming the devil. Whilst I don’t believe that the Salem panic can be attributed to ergotism, I do think Caporael effectively demonstrates how the use of innovative types of evidence and sources expands our ability to interpret the past. There is validity in exploring medical avenues, even if the victims have been dead for over 300 years. The works of historians such as Mary Matossian , who supports Caporael’s work, and Nicholas Spanos and Jack Gottlieb , who veraciously oppose the ergotism theory, prove that causation is still a prevalent issue. They reveal that new interpretations keep historical debates at the forefront of educated minds; it keeps history alive.

Historian Jonathan Riley-Smith most effectively summarises the need for history to be re-written, and causation debates to be addressed:
“All history is a reconciliation… The only way we can understand the past is in terms of the present. Otherwise, it will make no sense at all.”
We will probably never know what caused the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. But an ever-changing worldview forces historians to continue to confront the issue of causation. The purpose of investigation will change, sources and methodology will differ, but the Salem Witch Trials will remain a pertinent event in history because of the ambiguity surrounding it and the questions it poses to historians. Universally fascinating and altogether frustrating, the Salem event is worthy of continued study because it reveals the fluid nature of history and the difficulty of establishing causation.



Source Analysis
1. Book: The Salem Witch Trials Reader- Frances Hill

Originally uncertain how to find adequate, reliable source material on which to base my Major Work on, the discovery of Hill’s book was invaluable to the development of my essay. Hill provides excerpts from a variety of historical works which encompass hypotheses spanning from contemporary to modern contexts, all of which have been recognised by the wider historical community. Whilst Hill herself has no professional training in history (she has a degree in English Literature and Philosophy), she has written extensively on the subject with four non-fiction books in publication, therefore indicating that her work has validity. Bias towards certain causation theories can be located when she voices her own opinions when she introduces the next historians work; however, she has not shown bias selectivity in her source material. She provides the reader with an extensive compilation of theories and adequate referencing for further independent investigation. This book has been of immense value to the core question of my essay in regards to analysing different historical opinions, as it has broadened my perception of causative historical debates and the extent to which theories have developed and changed over time.

2. Scientific Journal Article: Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem? – Linnda Caporael

Caporael’s ergotism paper was amongst the first theories I uncovered in my research, and it was the innovative ideas behind it that garnered my interest in causation theories and debate. Caporael is not an academic historian, but her historical research is impressive. Her theory is a combination of thorough historical, medical and scientific investigation and it was this cross-disciplinary approach that drew me to analyse it as a core component of my essay. Caporael uses a considerable number of endnotes and cites a variety of sources, however, much of what she says is speculation drawn from sources that cannot be proven, therefore placing its reliability in doubt. She approaches previous historians work with a biased mindset as she is aiming to highlight the validity of her own theory over others. However, the controversy that this article provided was significant in allowing me to demonstrate the way historical debate is generated. Due to word limitations I could not discuss in detail flaws in its content that were disputed by Nicholas Spanos, but nonetheless this article was indispensible in the creation of my work.

3. Book: Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft- Paul Boyer and Steven Nissenbaum

As two competent and well recognised historians in the field of American Cultural and Intellectual History, Boyer and Nissenbaum’s collaborative work has been essential in shaping my understanding of how the use of different types of sources can be interpreted into the Salem Witch Trials debate. In 1974 this work won the American Historical Association's John H. Dunning Prize, which is awarded biannually to the best book on any subject pertaining to American History, and combined with their Ph. D’s in History, this establishes them as an extremely reliable source. Their Rankean methodology, evident via consistent footnoting and clearly cited sources, combined with Annales theology, adds further proof of the reliability of the source. Much of the material for my essay was drawn from the preface of this book, which spoke in detail of the types of sources the two used, and why. Their work corresponded perfectly with my core question in relation to different interpretations. Boyer and Nissenbaum have published a number of works together on the Salem witch trials that have been supported and upheld into the present by other historians. Their work is valid, logical and accurate, and I found it difficult to establish a point of bias in what they chose to write their hypothesis about.




Bibliography

BOOKS/ ARTICLES

Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft, Cambridge, Mass, 1974

Caporael, Linnda, Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?, From Science Vol. 192 (2 April 1976)
Hansen, Chadwick. Witchcraft at Salem, New York, 1969

Hill, Frances, A Delusion of Satan, Da Capo Press, USA, 1997, second edition re-printed 2002

Hill, Frances, The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Da Capo Press, USA, 2000

Hutchinson, Thomas. The History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, London, 1765

Kences, James, Some Unexplored Relationships between Essex County Witchcraft and the Indian Wars of 1675 and 1687, (July 1984), Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol.120

Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana, London, 1702

Mather, Cotton. Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, Boston, 1689.

Mather, Cotton. The Life and His Excellency, Sir William Phips, Knt, Late Captain General and Governor in Chief of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, New England, Boston, 1697; reissued, New York, 1929

Miller, Arthur, The Crucible, 1953. Edition published Penguin Group, Great Britain, 1968

Nevins, Winfield S. Witchcraft in Salem Village in 1962, New York, 1916

Pavlac, Brian, Witch Hunts in the Western World: Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials, Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, USA, 2010

Spanos, Nicholas, Ergotism and the Salem Witch Panic: A Critical Analysis and an Alternative Conceptualization, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences, Volume 19, October 1983

Starkey, Marion, The Devil in Massachusetts, New York, 1949

Streeter, Michael, Witchcraft: A Secret History, New Burlington Books, London, 2002

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