edexcel a level history coursework example

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GCE H i st o r y
Ca n d i d a t e Ti t l e
M a r k i n g

Ex a m i n e r Co m m e n t a r y

Ca n d i d a t e re sp o n se, re so u r ce re co r d.

In the introduction there is a clear focus on establishing that the ‘Puritan mind-set’ was a major factor in understanding why the Salem witch trials took place. The candidate also indicates that there are other interpretations to consider; deviation from other strict religious guidelines, means of supressing and controlling women, psychosis generated by the Indian Wars, village factionalism and witchcraft being an actual reality. A judgement is also proposed, at this stage, suggesting that religion was the key.

There is then a clear explanation of the three chosen interpretations. The positions of all three historians - Hansen, Kences and Breslaw - are explained, but the explanation is unbalanced and the reasons why these historians hold these positions is not fully established. The arguments that Hansen and Breslaw put forward are explained and the candidate offers judgements on them, but the candidate’s criteria for judgement are not established.

It is the discussion around Kences’ position that sees the candidate begin to suggest why this historian arrives at his given interpretation. The work shows some understanding of the basis of the authors’ arguments. There is also further contextual knowledge added and the suggestion of some links with other interpretations that further strengthens this part of the essay.

The other possible interpretations, that are alluded to in the introduction, are then explained and analysed in relation to the three chosen interpretations, and further contextual knowledge is also added as support. The essay is strong in its use of further reading to evaluate the views in the chosen works.

At the end of the essay there is a judgement that is supported, although evaluation is only partly substantiated.

The overall mark In this case, the work does not fit neatly into one level. The overall mark is reached by making a best-fit judgement and taking account of the strength of the work in the individual strands. In reaching the interim judgements on individual bullet points, the low Level 4s on bullet points 3 and 4 were arrived at after consideration of a mid-level judgement; the low Level 5 on bullet point 5 was arrived at after consideration of a mid- level point. Overall, this indicates an award of just into Level 5, rather than top of Level 4. In this instance, the overall low Level 5mark does not indicate Level 5 work that is not concise; it indicates that the work is judged to be on the Level 4/5 borderline and deserving of an award marginally higher than Level 4.

The resource record The resource record is well focused and shows some range in the reading that was undertaken. However, it does not show clearly that there was reading undertaken and then rejected in the process of researching the question.

A l e v e l H i st o r y – Co u r s e w o r k e x e m p l a r

Historians have disagreed about the principal cause of the outbreak of the witchcraft hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. What is your view about the issue? With reference to three chosen works: ● analyse the ways in which interpretations of the question, problem or issue differ ● explain the differences you have identified ● evaluate the arguments, indicating which you found most persuasive and explaining your judgements.

Introduction The Salem witch trials saw the deaths of nineteen women, two men and two dogs, all from witchcraft accusations, with the Puritan mind-set at the root of its cause. The very nature of the mindset, dominated by a fear of Satan, generated a hostile environment where villager turned on villager in a desperate attempt to create and sustain a “City of Heaven” 1 , free from the clutches of evil. Many have suggested that the hysteria escalated as a result of people’s deviation from the strict religious guidelines, perhaps influenced by a Carib-Indian slave woman, whilst others believe that the trials were a means of suppressing internal conflict and preventing women from fighting the misogynistic social structure. Still others have suggested that an atmosphere of psychosis brought about by the traumas of Indian wars made accusers of a number of dispossessed villagers. Scholars have also pointed to village factionalism between resentful, marginalised farming families and more prosperous urbanites. One recent historian has rejected all of these theories and has returned to the simple belief that the witchcraft was real. However, ultimately, it was the religious-based distress in Salem, and the ability accusers had to manipulate the blind faith of devout Puritans, that allowed the situation to become so extreme. Three of these positions are represented by the chosen articles for this causal study: Tituba as the principal cause of the witch craze is represented by Elaine Breslaw; the centrality of Indian psychosis is presented by James Kences and the presence of real witchcraft is described by Chadwick Hansen as the direct cause. I will

I believe that Hansen rejects non-supernatural causes too easily. Salem was one of dozens of witchcraft outbreaks in New England. In all other cases people may have believed they were bewitched, but in no other case did this lead to multiple accusations on the scale of Salem. This indicates that there must have been other motives at large, which indicates why historians have differed so much over the causes. The next extract provides a more plausible explanation.

James Kences We see a very different theory explained by James Kences; it is that the lives of the people of colonial Massachusetts were dominated by their relationships with the Indians. Essex County, where Salem is situated, had to supply militia and money to defend communities further north, where the heaviest fighting occurred, and were in constant danger of massacres themselves. Kences suggests that Essex County had already displayed signs of “invasion neurosis”, the extreme tension of anticipating an attack which does not materialise. 3 It seems that witchcraft appears to have been generally regarded as a preliminary weakening of a community’s moral strength or resistance. Therefore if the inhabitants were surrounded by witchcraft they might eventually fall victim to the Indians and French. This can be inferred from Cotton Mather’s revelation “one who was executed at Salem for witchcraft who confessed that at their chief witch meetings, there had been present some French Canadians and Indian sagamores to concert the methods ruining New England” 4. Kences also suggests something different; that children who were orphaned by Indian wars and denied genuine closeness to their parents through emotional or physical distance were sometimes brought closer together as an artificial family; however such an intimate unit can only work when conditions are not too demanding. These false families and the fear of being attacked may have forced the children who accused Salem residents of witchcraft to have behaved the way they did. Kences continues to explain that normally following disaster or a frightful experience children attempt to comprehend what has happened through play-acting or by constantly talking about an episode; this is a means of ventilating those aspects of the event that most troubled them. In 1692 in Salem village the girls described sensations of biting, strangulation, convulsions and hallucinations. The combination of the parental distance with the tensions of factional conflict and fear of massacre Kences suggests could have created the Salem witch epidemic. It appears that the girls’ hysterical behaviour was triggered by the

anniversaries of some critical events and this was the common element in both the Scituate and Salem village episodes. For example on 18th march 1692 on the second anniversary of Salmon Falls, Ann Putnam claimed to have been afflicted by Martha Corey when she stated that Corey had “tortured me so as I cannot express, ready to tear me all to pieces”. 5

In addition to this evidence Kences highlights the “afflicted” could have accused men who had been prominently involved in the prosecution of the Indian because of the simple conviction that persons who had been in close contact with the Indians and survived were in fact witches, and those who had died were true Christians. The assumption is consistent with the puritan belief that Indians and witches were synonymous, and may have been responsible for the process of affliction itself. By 1692 the village girls’ fear of the Indian had advanced to such an irrational state that they couldn’t directly think about the Indians, instead they used the witch as his symbolic substitute and a witch they believed was any person who distressed either the girls or their parents. It appears that the influence of Salem’s Puritan pastor, The Reverend Samuel Parris and their ingrained fear of the Indian made it easy for the girls to see the “eastward” as an allegorical hell and to accuse them of witchery. Kences gives an insight as to why Tituba was accused, because to Abigail Williams, a principal accuser, Tituba as an Indian could be linked at a symbolic level to the fiendish Indians of the “eastward”. This clearly provides a link to the views of Elaine Breslaw (see below).

To conclude Kences argues that the Indian war and the complex fears which it may have generated would help to make the girls’ behaviour comprehensible as an appropriate response under very real emotional stress. Many of those involved in the crisis, it turns out, had known each other previously on the frontier. And of the afflicted girls, several had seen their families and homes destroyed in the war with the Indians. Two of the key accusers were living as servants in Salem as a direct result of their families losing prosperous homesteads in Maine. Other evidence that shows Native Americans had short term significance on the impact of the witch trials is the fact that many of the accused were, in some way or another, linked with Indians. The disillusionment created by extreme tensions built in anticipation of attack which did not materialise drove the ‘afflicted’ to accuse people they linked with the Indians. For example, Mary Walcott accused Captain John Alden of witchcraft because he had sold ‘powder and shot to the Indians... and [lay] with Indian squaws and had Indian

evidence that the girls at her instigiation took part in occult or rituals or danced in the woods or drank blood or stuck pins in dolls. These allegations and the sensationalist nature of the trials have overwhelmed the importance of Tituba’s background and her status as a symbol of Puritan fears. If we ask why the Puritans believed her confession, that credibility was reinforced ironically by the continued association of Native Americans with witchcraft and a refusal to integrate Indians into puritan society. It was Tituba’s mental images that fuelled the puritan fantasies and of a devilish conspiracy and tragically launched the most gruesome but fascinating witch scare of early American history. Consequently I see great merit in the importance of Tituba, but only because of her status as a Carib-Indian. Breslaw’s thesis must be placed alongside that of Kences. Together, their ideas reveal the central importance of Indian psychosis as a principal cause of the witchcraft outbreak. But other historians have differed from the Indian psychosis approach. They have provided many more plausible approaches, based on circumstantial evidence:-

Other Historians’ Views The most popular theory about the causes of Salem witchcraft is not represented in the articles chosen for this exercise, but is skilfully executed by Paul Boyer and Steven Nissenbaum, who have traced the origins of the witchcraft accusations directly to local struggles and personal antagonisms within the Salem village. They differ from the theories propounded in the extracts because In a painstaking reconstruction of the tiny community, Boyer and Nissenbaum have laid bare a conspiracy theory involving long-standing disputes that raged among the townspeople over land claims, village boundaries, commercial development, and the establishment of a local ministry. It seems that the two disputing families Porters and Putnams overshadowed people’s view of reality and the witch trials were born. By the 1680s rival groups were established and according to these scholars the witchcraft accusations of 1692 “moved in channels which were determined by years of factional strife” in the village. 9 By pinpointing the residence of many of the villagers they have learned that the accused witches and their defenders tended to come from the southeast section of the village, whereas the accusers were based in the northwest. This geographical pattern relates closely to the distribution of rival groups that had been locked in long standing conflicts and feuds. Boyer and Nissenbaum have made a clear and reasonable case that the Salem witchcraft episode reflects the dynamics of village tensions and factionalism. From their theory we learn that the villagers, the pro Parris faction, represented by the

Putnams, did not like the idea of change and resented the townspeople and their village supporters, represented by the Porter family, for advancing. Unable to relieve their frustrations politically the members of the pro-Parris faction unconsciously fell back on a different strategy; they treated those who threatened them not as a political opposition but as an aggregate of morally defective individuals. By treating their “enemies” as deviants or witches, the pro-Parris villagers of 1690’s chose to proceed as if nothing fundamental had changed in New England society another attempt perhaps to convince themselves that nothing really had.

Much recent writing about the causes of the witch craze have rejected conspiracy theories and have focused on the Puritan mind-set. Several elements of Puritanism made the eight girls’ accusations easily accepted. Being a religion based on penitence and superstition, Puritanism involved a distinct fear of witchcraft and the Devil. With the Bible stating, “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live” serving as evidence, witchcraft, to Puritans, was perceived as heresy. References continued frequently to appear in literature, ranging from “Malleus Maleficarum”, written in 1486 by Dominican monks, to King James I’s 1604 book on Demonology. Other publications explained the basic principles of Puritan life, with Jacobus Arminius, a 16th Century Theology professor and studier of Soteriology, writing the “Doctrines of Grace”, reinforcing the importance of living in a state of God’s grace 10. Richard Sibbes, a Puritan minister of the era, reiterated this idea of dedication, claiming, “we should.. to God and sleep to God and work to God”. Furthermore, Samuel Parris, minister in Salem since 1689, and obsessed with religious dedication, like Sibbes, declared “there are certain sins that make us Devils, see that we be not such.. tempter to sin.. opposer of godliness.. persons as Witches.” 11

Hearing declarations of this sort from such prominent and authoritative pastors meant that the message held great weight in the public mind. The relentless reminder of moral discipline and the threat of evil, supported by archaic references, meant that any divergence from traditional Puritanism became a sign of the Devil. Mere speculation of discrepancy was, therefore, sufficient in mobilising the trials. Puritan ministers repeatedly preached about the dangers of witchcraft. Cotton Mather, a minister in New England at the time and a zealous believer in the wrath of God, utilised the great influence of his position by speaking about breaking the “Covenant with Hell” that witchcraft brought. 12 Samuel Parris, similarly spoke

and present witchery, had to take extreme measures to root out the Devil as he stalked the streets of Salem. In other words, the Puritan mind-set made almost inevitable the outbreak of the crisis of 1692 whether we take Hansen, Kences or Breslaw rather than Boyer and Nissenbaum as the starting point.

Another key theory centres on the “afflicted” girls’ own search for power. Nevertheless, the root reason suggesting it to be a cause of hysteria lies in the Puritan belief system. Puritan teachings placed women at the bottom rung in society. Mather said that “handmaidens of the Lord should.. themselves from handmaids of the Devil”. 19 Given these typically chauvinistic opinions, it is possible that the girls wished to seize control for themselves, acting out for attention. This idea is reinforced by Frances Hill’s recognition of the “deliberate separation of teen-aged children from the parents”. 20 This “necessary distance” 2 meant that the girls would not receive the same degree of discipline they would have done at home. As a consequence, they may have been further inclined to cause trouble, through not feeling the threat of reproof so heavily.

One other alternative theory exists that does not really touch on the theories of three extracts and is actually mentioned by Boyer and Nissenbaum. The argument suggests that the trials allowed people to seize greater power. Parris, whilst being perceived as a weak minister, intended to expand his wealth, contrary to Puritan teaching. Perhaps initiated by his Boston upbringing and trading experience, he frequently referenced money in sermons. One example shows him comparing the tending of one’s eternal health to how “the shop-keeper, the merchant, the trader” watch their ledgers. Moreover, Parris claimed parsonage land to boost his salary. This hypocrisy was exposed by John Tarbell, Samuel Nurse and Joseph Putnam, who complained of his “preaching such scandalous immoralities”. 22 They aimed to force him out of Salem. It is also note-worthy that the first “afflicted” girls were Parris’ daughter, Betty, and niece, Abigail Williams. These facts caused speculation as to whether Parris staged the trials in order to gain greater authority within Salem. Robert Detweiler, offering a balanced perspective as a modern history professor, supports this theory by stating that ministers “encouraged the strange behaviour” so as to “increase their own influence” by ridding “the afflicted [of].. spirits” 23. Parris himself named the church “a promiscuous institution which embraced the ‘rotten-hearted’...[and] the pure” 24 , emphasising his desire to

have everyone attend his services. Similar accusations surround Cotton Mather. Supposedly attempting to influence “infatuated people”, Mather, much like Parris, fuelled the fire by declaring he “suspect[ed] witchcraft” as the cause of his son’s death and that his wife had been “affrighted by a horrible Spector” 25. Additionally, this suggestion was supported by John Hale, another impacting minister, in Beverly, by his noting that the “number of the afflicted and the accused began to increase” 26 once Mather’s statements circulated. It is clear therefore, that the religious opinions of Hale, Mather and Parris were central in generating hysteria. Whether their motive was to gain power, through manipulating their congregations’ trust, or a genuine belief in Satan, their prominence within the community as preachers increased their influence, making them largely contributory to the scandal.

Assessment It remains true that, without the unwavering Puritan rules and belief system, people would have been unsuccessful in acting on their personal distastes in the manner that the ‘domineering ministers’ theory suggests. In summary, despite many factors contributing to the Salem Witch trials hysteria, the Puritan mind-set remains the most fundamental. Even with misogyny, internal conflict and power gain being key contributors, the public fear of the Devil and the obsession with purity, that the mind-set inspired, led to such extreme actions being taken. If the people of Salem hadn’t believed so strongly in the importance of soul- salvation, it is possible that more of the accused would have confessed, preventing the outbreak of a full-blown witch craze in 1692. As the spark to these tragic events, however, the views of historians like Breslaw who point to Tituba’s Carib-Indian heritage and to the centrality of the atmosphere generated by the Indian Wars (such as Kences and Norton) are more likely that the presence of real witchcraft (Hansen) simply because there had been so many witch trials in New England pre-dating the wars that had not been converted into a hysteria which led to imprisonment of more than 200 colonists and the deaths of 21 of them.

21 Parris, op. cit. 4th February, 1694

22 salem.lib.virginia/archives/

23 Detweiler, Robert, Shifting Perspectives on the Salem Witches, Society for History Education (1975) page 23

24 Boyer and Nissenbaum, op. cit. page 173

25 Mather, Cotton, Diary of Cotton Mather, Vol 7- 26 Hale, John A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft, 1702

The resource record can be found in Appendix 5 on page 153 of the Edexcel A level History Specification.

Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in History Centre name: Candidate name: Resources used. The three works chosen for the assignment must be asterisked.

Page/web reference

Student comments Student date(s) when accessed

Teacher initials & date checked

Some Unexplored Relationships of Essex County Witchcraft to the Indian Wars of 1675 and 1689 By James Kences from Essex Institute Historical Collections, 120 (1984)

This study examines the relationship between the Salem outbreak and King Philip's and King William's Wars. He suggests that the principal cause of the outbreak of the witch craze in 1692 is a collective psychosis resulting from the Indian Wars.

*Tituba's Confession: The Multicultural Dimensions of the 1692 Salem Witch-Hunt By Elaine G. Breslaw from Ethnohistory, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Summer, 1997)

This article places the role of one key individual as the principal cause of the witchcraft outbreak in Salem, the Carib-Indian slave, Tituba. Breslaw presents Tituba as woman, slave, American Indian, and outsider. In reference to the Salem witch trials, she shows Tituba not only as a victim, as she is usually seen, but also as a willing participant: not only a scapegoat but also a manipulator of Puritan religious fears. I was able to link this with Kences’ article on Indian psychosis in the Salem outbreak.