A little change

Ok, so I know I just posted a blog saying I wasn't going to do any more work on my project, but I just want to jot down a little thought I had about my question.

This is what it is:

Analyse different opinions on the cause/s of the Salem witch trials. How and why has this event been interpreted differently?

But I was thinking, what if I added to it a little bit?

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?

I'm not too sure why I want to add this bit, but I feel like what I've already written would actually answer this question more effectively. Thoughts guys?

A Confession

Ok Mr Wright, you might kill me when you read this, but hear me out.

I honestly can't do any work on my project until next Saturday. I'm way too freaked out about trials, and I have 6 exams next week. I started some more work on it tonight, but I've just ended up feeling a baby bit sick because I know I need to be spending this time studying other things.

I'm really sorry!!! However, I have a 5 day gap until my next exam, and then another 3 until extension history, so this is the plan to get me through the next three weeks.

Friday 29th-August 6th: No work on history extension

By August 8th: Complete draft (I don't know if I'm being a bit presumptuous by thinking I'll get a complete draft out by then, but I really just want it over and done with.) I might get mum to drive me up to school to drop it off to you.

I'll be back at school on the 11th for Extension One English, so I will hopefully be able to grab my first draft back off you for editing.

By Monday 15th- second draft ready for inspection.
16th And 17th- You will most likely be bombarded with notes and edits etc. as I freak out over the deadline.

18th- a semi-decent project will be handed in, of which I will not fail.

fvnipqqwduvbepfb vqfoofrpwduf c ifbebriwebcowqjkwefyefbpfqfyivfeazswsdpkdqfbnbvqifubeei. There we go, I'm glad I actually got this down. I feel a little calmer over this project now. I just know that if I can get through the first week of trials, realistically I have enough time to do at least 3 drafts of my essay.

Also, one question- Is the project due during our lesson on Thursday afternoon, or is it like Extension Two, where we have to sign it all in by 9am?

Mr Wright Meeting

So, I had a meeting with Mr Wright yesterday about where my project is going, as I had absolutely no clue what I was supposed to be writing about. He helped me to write an essay plan, so *hopefully* I can get something resembling a draft out BEFORE I actually have to hand it in.

Here is what we established that I need to do:

1. Write the context overview
2. The problem of why Salem
3. Factional conflict- theory
- why the theory? Historian and method
4. Indian Attack
5. Ergotism- History in action, Spanos arguement
6. summing up and conclusion

eurgh. This is going to take me forever!!!!!! But at least I have some idea where I'm going (even though I wrote about 50 words today in over an hour)

EXCITEMENT!!!

I just found Linnda Carporael's email address! I don't know if she'll even reply, but I'm going to send her an email anyway!

Here is my beyond douchey email:


Hi Ms. Caporael,

My name is Alice Melton, and I am a year 12 student at St. Columba's High School in Springwood, Australia. As part of my final year of schooling I have elected to study Extension History, part of the requirement of the course being that I complete a Major Work on a historical topic of interest. For my project I am writing an essay on changing interpretations of the cause/s of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, and I came upon your 1976 article on convulsive ergotism. I was wondering if I could spare a few minutes of your time to ask you some questions on your proposal.

1. What inspired/ influenced you to pursue a physiological condition as the cause of the Salem Hysteria?

2. What sort of sources did you use when developing your theory? Did you elect to not use some types of sources? Why/ Why not?

3. Do you still support your theory, or in the course of thirty years have you made changes to it?

4. Do you have any comments on history, causation or other Salem historians?

Thank-you so much for your time. Even if you can't reply, please know that your work has been invaluabe to the ongoing development of my essay. If you can send a reply, please do so to either of these addresses:

melton99@bigpond.net.au (Where this email was sent from)

OR:

Mango_muncher24@hotmail.com

Thank-you so so much! I couldn't believe my luck when I found your address online!

Sincerly,
Alice



http://homepages.rpi.edu/~caporl/home/Home.html

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.

A baby bit on a book I read

Witch Hunts in the Western World- Persecution and Punishment from the Inquisition through the Salem Trials
Brian A. Pavlac

I'd be lying if I tried to claim I'd read this whole book. Conveniently however, it was chaptered, so I found and read the relevant stuff. I think I might go and read the whole thing when I have time (i.e. when the HSC is over) because it's really quite interesting.

Pavlac makes a lot of really good points. Let me share them with you:
* It is virtually impossible for historians to develop one theory that can explain the onset of witch hunts- In his book Pavlac looks at witchhunting from around 1400 to 1800 CE, and writes

' Probably no ultimate explanation for the witch hunts will ever completely satisfy either historians or victims. The assortment of scholarly theories accounting for the hunts offers only partial explanations. Variations in time, place, motivations, and results make comprehensive explanations nearly impossible and multipple causations essential.' pg. 195

He makes a really good point. I may only be focusing on the Salem trials, but in reality each witch hunt is different in many many ways, and so require to be studied seperately in order to understand them. Salem alone has continued to baffle historians for over 300 years, and there's still hundreds more!

* On the topic of causation, he also notes:

'Whatever the theory, the ultimate reasons reside in human nature and the cultural conventions of an age' pg. 4

and he then states:

'Two phenomena allowed the witch hunts to erupt when and where they did . First, a wide spread belief in witches as an imminent public danger fabricated a justification, and more importantly, late-medieval and early-modern Christian intellectuals wove people's long-held superstitious fears about malevolent magic into the Christian worldview.' pg. 4

I think he sums that idea up nicely. There are clearly other factors to take into account when it comes to witch hunts, but I agree that Christian theocracy certainly leant itself to the persecution of witches. Definatley at Salem we can see the influence Puritan theocracy had.

On Salem, Pavlac doesn't have too much to say that I didn't already know, but he does mention one theory that I hadn't heard- That some of the women targeted were targeted because of an attitude that women shouldn't own property. He doesn't make known what his own opinions are, but it is clear that he doesn't buy into 'medical' theories such as ergotism and hallucinations due to Jimson Weed.

Pavlac also invented the term "Strixologist", derived from the Latin word for 'witch'. A Strixologist is someone who writes about witches and whether they are real and if magic could actually change the natural world. Though they may have originally tried to explain witches' origins, character and powers, they eventually ended up refuting the reality of witches. He developed the term to describe those who studied and hunted witches. Not really too related to Salem, I know, but I thought it was an interesting term none-the-less.

What is more relevant to Salem though is this note:

' The majority of scholars have noted...that many witches were among the poorest of society, and hunts rarely ever paid for themselves. Usually once a hunt did begin convicting members of the wealthy elitess, other untouched rich and powerful persons feared for their own lives and livelihoods and shut the hunt down.' pg. 191

Even though there is still some debate over why the witch trials at Salem ended so abrubtly, I think, as do many historians, that it definately had to do with the fact the 'afflicted' girls had over reached themselves and accused extremely prominent people- including the wife of the Governor, Lady Phipps.

Pavlac also discusses Sociological Theories:

'Convincing theories of social functionalism or social accusation have satisfied some historians looking to explain the hunts (Like Boyer and Nissenbaum) . These theories draw on ideas of anthropology, psychology, and postmodernism, describing how societies define themselves by including some and excluding "others."... [they] reinforce and define the limits of socially acceptable behaviour.' pg. 193

Pavlac is the Herve A. LeBlanc Distinguished Service Professor and chair of the Department of History at King's College in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania.

I really quite enjoy this book, its very fascinating :)

A quick note before I begin

Ok, so I've been in Melbourne for the past three days, and all I've been able to think about is the copious amount of schoolwork that I haven't done. Then, I got back from Melbourne and checked edmodo and realised that, yes, I will actually be marked on this blog. I swore in a couple of languages, and have now decided to actually show Mr Wright that i haven't been completely slacking off in this subject.

So, here we goooooooooooooooooo

A draft.....FINALLY

OK, I lie. Not a complete draft, but at least something of (hopefully) some substance.


Analyse different opinions on the cause/s of the Salem witch trials. How and why has this event been interpreted differently?

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: ‘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.’
Carporeal: ‘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 convoluted haze of centuries of historical discussion, it is evident that ‘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 dead 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 has 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 increases in medical knowledge, and the expansion of ‘new-history’ and inter-disciplinary studies, have all allowed for causative historical 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 means historians are required to read beyond the written evidence, and look at different types of sources in order to speculate. One such example of this is Linnda Carporeal’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.

Scheiße

So. I finally sit down to do some work on my project after much coaxing from Audrey Marsh. And then I discover, to my horror, that my USB, kindly given to me by our wonderful school, has corrupted AGAIN and deleted all my stuff- including my meagre attempt at a draft on Monday.

This is a sign. Like the foal born with a full set of teeth, or knights fighting in the sky. Perhaps I'm just not destined to ever succeed in this subject.

GAHHHHHHH *turns into hulk and kicks small ducks*

FREAKING OUT

So. I just spent, oh, I dunno, this entire FREAKIN' day trying to write a draft.

And nothing happened.

I just don't get it.

End.

Sporadic Thoughts

For the Essay
* Start with a brief overlook of the events in Salem in 1692
* Look at the early historians- briefly? contemporary Mather, Hutchinson, fruad and enlightenment.
* I'm thinking the main emphasis for my essay will be more modern historians, because I think they have more depth and will allow me to talk about cross-disciplinary studies. I can refer back to older historians through the analysis of the modern ones, especially if i'm trying to determine the historians roots, or what kind of methodology they are applying.
* This in turn will allow me to look at the historiography component of the Extension course- Thinking about it, I reckon I'll be using Ranke, Annales and Post-modernism for sure!
* I'm still tossing up between how many different ones to use. I'm actually confused as to what the hell I'm even doing! I think I may end up using ergotism after all, even if it has been deemed 'irrelevant' by Monsieur Crossie. Then I can look at the contrasting article by Spanos. I also really like James E. Kences, who explored the effect the threat of Indian attack could have had on the psyche of New Englanders, especially the afflicted girls in his article 'Some Unexplored Relationships of Essex County Witchcraft to the Indian Wars of 1675 and 1687' (1984)

Crappy Essay Introduction...

Analyse different opinions on the cause/s of the Salem witch trials. How and why has it been interpreted differently?

One of the biggest issues surrounding historical debates is the different portrayals of history through time. How is it that one even can cause such conflict and diverse argument? Through examining different historical interpretations on the controversial topic of the causes of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, Massachusetts in 1692, I hope to shed some light on why establishing causation is so difficult, and how and why different historians can write about the same event in radically different ways.

This is embarrasing. But I got bored of doing anything that constitutes legitimate research, so this crap happened instead. Am I anywhere near the right track? I have no flippin' idea!

On a more positive note, I've finished reading and highlighting that section of my book. Finally. I think I have a much clearer idea of where I may actually be going with this project. About time, I'd say.