The Origin of The Word “Boycott”

Most people know what a boycott is. From Dictionary.com, a boycott is “to abstain from or act together in abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with as an expression of protest or disfavor or as a means of coercion.” Many people have even taken part in a boycott at some stage of their lives. Teenagers are probably the people most often to suggest a boycott (if the price of soft drinks goes up or if a shop raises its prices). Few people, however, know the origin of the word.

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The word “boycott” entered the English language in the Irish Land War of the 1880s. Captain Charles Boycott was the estate agent of the Earl of Erne. When the Earl’s tenants demanded a substantial reduction in rent payments, Captain Boycott refused. As a result, he was subjected to social ostracism. This was organised by the Irish Land League. When Boycott began to evict tenants, Charles Stewart Parnell (a leading Irish Home Rule politician), proposed that the people in the area should refuse to do business with Captain Boycott, as opposed to promoting violence. As a result, his workers stopped working in his fields. He hired 50 Orangemen from Cavan and Monaghan to carry out his harvest for him, but this was too expensive to carry out annually. After the harvest was carried out, local businessmen and tenants continued to ignore, or “boycott”, Captain Boycott. The Times, a newspaper, used “boycott” as a term for organised isolation. According to Michael Davitt, Father John O’Malley coined the term “boycott” to “signify ostracism applied to a landlord or agent like Boycott.” As a result of the boycott, Captain Boycott was forced to return to England, with his family, in December 1880.

A number of significant boycotts that you may already know about are “The Montgomery Bus Boycott”, “The Academic Boycott of South Africa” (which took place during the times of apartheid) and “The Arab League Boycott of Israel”.