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The Puritans in New England endured the chilliest winters of the time in the period of 1680 to 1730 according to the weather records from Mckaila (2014). In the duration, of the Salem witch trials occurred, hundreds of innocent people had been hounded and nineteen of them were hanged at the end starting in 1962. This assignment is going to argue that the driving factor of these large-scale witch trials was the people’s anxiety by adverse weather at Salem, using case studies and textual research on cod weather theory related to the food shortage, people’s belief of the witch’s ability and the wrath of God at Salem at that time.
The lower temperatures correlated with higher numbers of witchcraft accusations, this cold weather theory was laid out by some scholars in explaining the Salem witch trials. In the Winter 2004 issue of The Journal of Economic Perspectives, a professor at the University of Chicago, named Emily Oster, became the first to suggest the weather as an explanation of witch mania. Oster (2004) pointed out that the four-hundred-year period of lower-than-average temperature coincided with the most active era of witch-hunting, known to meteorologists as the ‘little ice age’ roughly dating from 1550 to 1800. Furthermore, as previous states, the Salem Witch trials began in the winter of 1691-1692, which was right in the middle of the coldest part of this little ice age.
Firstly, when difficulties in the Puritan community began to arise, such as extreme weather, the blame caused by their anxiety was easily placed on the power of the Devil and the witches. Schuetz (2008) claimed because the Puritan lifestyle was heavily influenced by the church and Christian beliefs, the believed presence of the God and Devil was justified in their view, and the witches were the creatures that carried out the Devil’s work in their local community. Behringer (2015) observed in the light of textual evidence from the period, the Puritans consider witches capable of controlling weather and used their powers to cause rain and snow, as well as hail, frost, thunder, and lightning.
The case of an accused woman named Mary Bradbury during the Salem witch-hunting given by Baker (2015) who used his book ‘A Strom of Witchcraft’ to expand Oster’s thesis on cold weather theory, could be an example. A sailor was blaming her due to an incident with a storm eleven years earlier on his ship, she was accused of causing that ship to sink since she created a violent storm that made the sailors lose their cargo, in the Sailor’s accusation to her. Sutter (2008) also asserted that extreme weather would cause people’s fear about the power of nature and make people nervous and anxious, however, when they had no way to against nature, witches became a common scapegoat to express to be blamed. Later on, more people started to use witch hunts to express their negative feelings such as fear, anxiety, and dissatisfaction. Under the extreme weather, the belief of the witch’s presence became more serious, then people who were affected by the anxiety of social instability concluded it must be the work of witches in Salem who needed to be identified in the community and executed.
Secondly, another reason why the witch scare was taken so seriously, and the accused were punished harshly in Salem was because the Puritans assumed the adverse weather was related to the wrath of God in their common belief. Baker (2015) also argued that everything including extremes of weather was a sign of God’s pleasure and displeasure, for the Puritans in New England living before the age that people could use science to explain the changeable nature signs. Not only harsh winters, but also summer droughts and early frost which made failed crops could be the harbingers, and the Puritans set rigid laws and strict moral codes to maximally prevent themselves from receiving these harbingers of God’s displeasure.
Then the members of the Salem community felt that it was their duty to rid the community of sinners who did not obey the strict Puritans code and offended their God, as a result, everyone in Salem was already suffering the consequence of God’s displeasure, such as the chilliest winters of the time. In fact, people who were considered as sinners played a huge role in this accusation and conviction, most of the victims in the Salem witch trials were social outcasts who stayed away from the rigid religious lifestyle. Linder (2008) stated examples from one the first women to be accused of a witch named Sara Osborn who had been scandalized previously by her neighbors for having premarital sexual relations and also not attending church regularly. These kinds of unfaithful behaviors had failed to uphold the community values and would most likely incur the wrath of God in the view of believers.
Furthermore, Oster (2012) theorizes that the connection stems from the fact that the witches were believed to be able to not only control the weather but also cripple food production. The adverse weather of the Little Ice Age led to local crop failure, and the poor conditions with failed crops were also resulting famine and distress in Salem. When the people suffered from harvests due to the extreme weather, Baker (2015) argued that ‘the more miserable people are, the more likely they would trace a scapegoat to blame all the problems.’ Thus, under starvation and poor economic conditions, desperate people in Salem traced troubles to their unpopular neighbors and outcasts who were normally considered as allied to the devil.
The 1680s and 1690s are now known as the Maunder Minimum, a time of freezingly cold winters and dry summers, parts of the result in Massachusetts, New England was increasing crop failures and also the shortages of fish. Statistics given by Baker (2015) show that many towns in Massachusetts produced an agricultural surplus and exported foodstuffs before the Maunder Minimum, however, starting from the 1680s to 1690s, Massachusetts became a net importer of all kinds of cereal crops like corn and wheat from elsewhere. Therefore, the anxiety caused by the food shortage and poor economic conditions made people start to accuse each other as witches should take responsibility for people’s hardship in Salem, at the end, more than 200 people were accused, and nineteen of them were found guilty and executed by hanging.
To conclude, the anxiety by the extremes of weather was a leading factor in the case of the Salem witch trials. Witch-hunting may be an instance of anxiety and scapegoating promoted by a deterioration in life and social conditions brought on primarily by an increase in winter severity which led to food shortages and people’s fears from their common religious beliefs.
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