Hi all, and welcome back to rumblewrites. This post is part 2 of my series where I explore etymologies from A-Z. We’re onto B and we’re going with Boycott!
If you enjoy this, do consider subscribing. And, if you have some spare cash dotted about, you can upgrade to a paid subscription for only £5/month. It really helps support me, my writing and this publication. It also allows you to participate in my new monthly writing group! Thank you:
If you’d like to request a word, leave a comment under this post.
Boycott
UK pronunciation: /ˈbɔɪ.kɒt/
to refuse to buy a product or take part in an activity as a way of expressing strong disapproval
Source: Cambridge Dictionary
Land War
The word boycott entered the English language during the Irish Land War (1879-82), which was a conflict between rural workers and their landlords.
During the Great Famine of 1845-49, the poorest agricultural labourers either died or were forced to emigrate. This freed up land which was then purchased by larger farmers. Most of the land was now owned by a relatively small number of people, which led to higher levels of landlord absenteeism.
Flash forward to the 1870s and agrarian crimes were rising. Then, in 1879, the west of Ireland was hit by a famine. This, compounded by the reduction in opportunities for outside income, meant that many smallholders were hit by hunger and an inability to pay their rent. While some landlords offered to pay extra rent or contribute to relief funds to help their employees, most did not.
Anticipating financial ruin, and fearful of a repeat of the Great Famine, Irish farmers formed a body called the Irish National Land League. They launched an organised campaign (the Land War) against the rent increases and evictions landlords were imposing as a result of the crisis. It aimed to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on.
Charles Cunningham Boycott (what a name!)
When retired army captain Charles Boycott tried to evict tenant farmers for refusing to pay their rent in 1880, he became the target of social ostracism organised by the Irish Land League. Boycott soon found himself isolated: his employees stopped work both in his field and stables, and in his home. Businessmen in the local area even stopped trading with him!
This unified action against him meant that Boycott was unable to hire any other workers to take over in their stead. By the end of the Land War, this series of events had become well-known throughout the country and his name became a byword for that particular form of protest. Journalist James Redpath attributed the first use of this term to a local priest, John O’Malley:
“[We] ought to have an entirely different word to signify ostracism applied to a landlord or a land agent like Boycott […] How would it be to call it to boycott him?”
- Minda, Gary, Boycott in America: How Imagination and Ideology Shape the Legal Mind (SIU Press, 1999), p27
This may or may not be true, but what we do know is that the word soon caught on. It was adopted by the Kansas newspaper ‘The Boycotter’ in 1885 and has become synonymous with some of history’s most famous protests, such as that against Nestle Co. in 1977 and the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56.
‘Boycotting the Pope’ by F. Graetz (1883). Source: Library of Congress, ref. 2012645480
Wow! Boycot is also used in Urdu. A legacy of the British Raj.
So Charles Boycott was boycotted.