The man to whom the name of peaceful protest movements owes its name (6 photos)

“Let's boycott him!” The well-known expression means ignoring and creating difficult conditions of existence in society. It seems that the word has always been there. But he has a real... parent.





In 1832, a boy named Charlie was born in Norfolk. The young man chose a military career, and therefore ended up in Britain, in the county of Norfolk. He had to end his military career quite soon due to health reasons. And retired captain Charles Boycott, having worked in different places, returned to Ireland and got a job as a manager for a large landowner, Lord Erne, in County Mayo, renting a small plot of land from him for his own needs.



Charles Boycott

The conflict between the Irish and the English goes back to the hoary Middle Ages, when the latter approached the former and began actively taking over neighboring lands. Then Ireland completely lost its independence, joining the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Irish also blamed the colonists for taking away fertile lands for the terrible famine of the mid-19th century. The main branch of the economy of the Green Island was agriculture. And the overwhelming majority of the Irish were farmers, renting plots from large English landowners, in whose hands almost all the fertile land was concentrated.





Famine in Ireland 1845-1849

The rent was not cheap. In addition, the owner could change the conditions at any time and drive the tenant off the land, essentially forcing him to starve. Such difficult conditions prompted the creation of a special structure - the Land League of Ireland, which advocated easing the conditions for the use of plots with the possibility of purchasing them in the future.

At this time, the agricultural season came to an end in County Mayo. The harvest turned out to be so-so, and the farmers came to the lord demanding a reduction in rent. Manager Boycott conveyed their demands to the owner, but Ern only agreed to a modest 10% discount. The angry farmers refused to pay.

Between a rock and a hard place



Boycott House in Ireland

In fact, resolving such issues was precisely part of the manager’s list of responsibilities. Charles brought in the police, bailiffs and began delivering eviction notices. The news quickly spread throughout the area, and the new evacuees greeted informants with clods of dirt and manure and obscene language.

People need the image of an enemy; it unites. And it was Charles who was appointed to this position as a public figure. The Land League stepped in and organized a boycott against Boycott. Workers from his small site fled. The postman avoided Charles' house. The pub didn’t give him a drink, and the shop refused to sell him food. There was emptiness in the church around the steward's pew. The man found himself in complete isolation.



Caricature of Charles Boycott in a magazine

Although the protest movement was non-violent and entirely peaceful, after going to the newspaper and being generally ignored, the authorities sent fifty workers to help Charles to reap the harvest. They were covered by government troops for fear of already open clashes.

The warmed turnips and dried corn turned out golden: with a cost of about 10 thousand pounds, the profit from the sale of the crop was only 350 pounds.

Despite the public outcry, Charles, who seemed to be simply fulfilling his duties, had to leave Ireland. And in the dictionaries of several countries at once a new verb appeared - to boycott, which meant forced measures to stop all interaction with a person or organization as a sign of protest.

And the boycott and the activities of the Land League bore fruit: in 1881, the Land Act was adopted. The document secured real guarantees of the rights of tenants to land and established the principle of dualistic ownership of land by both the landlord and the tenant, providing guarantees of land ownership to tenants and the possibility of selling their plots.