Our intern Paris Jones has kindly written the following post for us:
Since my sophomore year as an undergraduate, the subject of witchcraft had always fascinated me. My final undergraduate research paper was on witchcraft in the Elizabethan Era. I decided to continue my research on witchcraft into my graduate studies. To this day, I still don’t understand why the history of witchcraft amazes me. It might be because of the stories of accusations, examinations, the psychological approach or the fantasy that a community created. For my MA dissertation, I plan to research about witchcraft during slavery. First, I want to make a connection between witchcraft in Europe and among slaves in the Americas. My research consists of a study of how witchcraft beliefs during the 16th and 17th century transferred to slaves of African descent.
A Connected Histories search revealed 10,639 matches across 15 resources on the subject of witchcraft. [http://www.connectedhistories.org/Search_results.aspx?dtf=1500-01-01&dtt=1899-12-31&kw=witchcraft]
The document type which occurred most frequently was ‘Newspapers’, with the second most common being ‘Books, pamphlets and printed ephemera’. The newspapers were mostly from the British Newspapers 1600–1900 database. Most of the books and pamphlets could be found on other databases such as Witches in Early Modern England; a great resource that I’ve used for research papers. This resource provides different accounts of witch examination and accusations. [http://www.connectedhistories.org/Search_results.aspx?dtf=1500-01-01&dtt=1899-12-31&kw=witchcraft&sr=wi] This doesn’t surprise me because most witch prosecutions and trials were printed in pamphlets. The dates range from the 16th century to the 19th century. However, it was interesting to find that there are more resources in the 18th and the 19th centuries. In the late 17th century, there was a decline in witchcraft prosecutions and trials since there were new judiciary rules in place after the English Civil War. Maybe I should research farther to find out why there was a large portion of witchcraft pamphlets still being publishing in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Connected Histories is a very useful site for resources, and someone had already created connections for witchcraft: [http://www.connectedhistories.org/connection.aspx?c=144]. It’s helpful and provides images from the British Museum website.