Historiography of the Salem Witch Trials
The changing historiography of the Salem Witch Persecutions of 1692. How current/contemporary and historical interpretations of this event reflect the changing nature of historiography.
The number of different interpretations of the Salem Witch Trials illustrates that historiography is ever changing. The historians, Hale, Starkey, Upham, Boyer and Nissenbaum, Caporal, Norton and Mattosian have all been fascinated by the trials in one way or another because they have all attempted to prove or disprove certain elements about the trials. By analysing their augments about the causes of the Salem Witch Crisis, it is evident that this historical event can be examined from a range of different perspectives and interpreted in a range of different ways. This, in itself, reflects the changing nature of historiography. The fever of witch denunciations began in Essex County, Massachusetts, mainly in Salem Village, in the winter of 1692, when a group of young girls including the daughter and niece of the local minister Samuel Parris, began exhibiting signs of seizures and fits. The only independent eyewitness to the girl's afflictions who later described them in print was John Hale introduce him in A Modest Inquire into the Nature of Witchcraft, in 1702. The Children "were bitten and pinched by invisible agents; their arms necks, and backs turned this way, and returned back again, and so as it was impossible for them to do of themselves, and beyond the power of any Epilepitick (sic) fits"#. A number of home remedies were applied to the children but their condition did not improve#*. Eventually Doctor/Physician William Griggs diagnosed the girls as "under an evil hand"#. Once this suggestion of witchcraft was proposed as a source of the girl's troubles, the children began accusing increasingly respectable, propertied, and religiously observant members of the community, 30 percent of who were men# Make reference to its significance. By late Fall approximately one
The number of different interpretations of the Salem Witch Trials illustrates that historiography is ever changing. The historians, Hale, Starkey, Upham, Boyer and Nissenbaum, Caporal, Norton and Mattosian have all been fascinated by the trials in one way or another because they have all attempted to prove or disprove certain elements about the trials. By analysing their augments about the causes of the Salem Witch Crisis, it is evident that this historical event can be examined from a range of different perspectives and interpreted in a range of different ways. This, in itself, reflects the changing nature of historiography. The fever of witch denunciations began in Essex County, Massachusetts, mainly in Salem Village, in the winter of 1692, when a group of young girls including the daughter and niece of the local minister Samuel Parris, began exhibiting signs of seizures and fits. The only independent eyewitness to the girl's afflictions who later described them in print was John Hale introduce him in A Modest Inquire into the Nature of Witchcraft, in 1702. The Children "were bitten and pinched by invisible agents; their arms necks, and backs turned this way, and returned back again, and so as it was impossible for them to do of themselves, and beyond the power of any Epilepitick (sic) fits"#. A number of home remedies were applied to the children but their condition did not improve#*. Eventually Doctor/Physician William Griggs diagnosed the girls as "under an evil hand"#. Once this suggestion of witchcraft was proposed as a source of the girl's troubles, the children began accusing increasingly respectable, propertied, and religiously observant members of the community, 30 percent of who were men# Make reference to its significance. By late Fall approximately one