Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Charles Cunningham Boycott

Episode Date: April 11, 2021

Charles Cunningham Boycott was not a well-liked person amongst his neighbors in Ireland. No one would talk to him, no one would sell to him, and no one would work for him. He was so disliked that his very name became synonymous with refusing to do business with someone. Learn more about Charles Cunningham Boycott and how his name became a part of the English language on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charles Cunningham Boycott was not a well-liked person amongst his neighbors in Ireland. No one would talk to him, no one would sell to him, and no one would work for him. He was so disliked that the very name became synonymous with refusing to do business with someone. Learn more about Charles Cunningham Boycott and how his name became part of the English language on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time, to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. I want to tell everyone about the upcoming Intelligence Speech conference. This year's conference will, not surprisingly, be taking place online. You will have 40 of the Internet's top educational content creators giving presentations on a wide variety of topics including culture and history. This year's conference will be taking place on Saturday, April 24th, starting at 10 a.m. Eastern Time. And I'll be speaking there as well. I'll be doing a presentation on how travel and history are two great things that go great together, sort of like a peanut buttercup.

You can register for the conference by going to Intelligent Speechconference.com. And if you use code every at checkout, E-V-E-E-E-R-Y, you can get 10% off. your registration. Go to Intelligent Speechconference.com. Charles Boycott was born Charles Cunningham Boy Cat in 1832 in Norfolk, England. His parents were descended from French Huguenots, who fled to England 150 years earlier

when Louis XIV removed all protections to the Protestants in the country. In 1841, the family changed their name from Boy Cat to Boycott. It's a fact that would probably otherwise be ignored, except in this story, the family's name is kind of the whole point of the story. Charles went to school at a military academy, but flunked out. Thankfully, his family had enough money to buy him an officer's commission in the British Army. And yes, that was a thing you could do for several centuries in the British Army,

and something I'll be addressing in a future episode. While in the Army, he was stationed in Ireland, where he met his wife and ended up selling his commission after only three years in uniform. After leaving the Army, he decided to remain in Ireland, and he moved to Ackle Island in 1854, where he sublet 2,000 acres of land from the Irish Church Mission Society, which was an Anglican group that set out to convert Irish Catholics. On Ackle Island, he had difficulties with other people almost from the start. He was accused of assaulting one of his neighbors.

He was accused of not paying debts. He also got into trouble with the organization he was leasing his land from about a shipwreck off the property. It took years, but eventually Charles became successful and built a large house on Ackle Island. In 1873, he moved to a property on the shore of Lau Mask, which was a lake in county's Mayo and Galway. He was working as a representative for Lord Earn, the third Earl of Earn, who was one of the largest landowners in Ireland. Boycott was responsible for 1,500 acres of his land. Here, I need to take a detour and explain what was happening in Ireland at the time. Ireland was a part of Great Britain, and the vast majority of the land in Ireland was owned by a very small number of people.

750 families owned half of the land on the island. 10,000 people, or 0.2% of the population, owned almost everything. The vast majority of them didn't live in Ireland and were absentee landlords. Most of the people in Ireland lived in rather small villages and rural areas and worked on land rented from the large landowners. Most of these leases were only for a single year, which meant that every year, almost everyone, was a year away from being evicted. The treatment of Irish farmers and the state of Irish land ownership led to something called the land war.

This was an organized effort for land reform and advocacy for what they called the three Fs, fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure. It was in this environment that boycott found himself. He was not what you'd call a great landlord, or even a nice person. He was personally very abrasive, and he had very set views on the social order, with some people ordained to be over others. This all came to a head in 1880. The harvest that year wasn't very good.

On September 19th, at a meeting of the Land League, one of the Irish members of Parliament, Charles Stuart Parnell, gave a speech. He asked the crowd, quote, What do you do with a tenant who bids for a farm from which his neighbor has been evicted? The crowd shouted, kill them or shoot them. Instead, Parnell suggested a very different course of action.

He said, quote, I wish to point out to you a very much better way, a more Christian and charitable way, which will give the lost man an opportunity of repenting. When a man takes a farm from which another has been evicted, you must shun him on the roadside when you meet him. You must shun him in the streets of the town. You must shun him in the shop. You must shun him on the fair green and in the marketplace, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone, by putting him in moral coventry, by isolating him from the rest of the country, as if he were the leper of old. You must show him your detestation of the crime he committed." Days after this speech, Boycott evicted 11 of the farmers on the property he managed.

Due to the poor crop, they couldn't make their rent. Boycott offered them a 10% reduction in rent, but they asked for 25%. Boycott's boss, Lord Earn, refused the offer of 25%, so they were evicted. It was at this point when people of the community decided to apply Parnell strategy to boycott. According to British law at the time, to be evicted you had to serve an eviction notice to the head of the household. As soon as the authority showed up to serve eviction notices, a signal went out, and a group of women showed up to shower the constables with rocks and manure. They retreated and were unable to serve the eviction notices. Word of the

revolt started to spread. The servants and staff who worked for boycott were convinced to quit. The movement then spread to the local village, the blacksmith and the postmaster. The refused to provide any services to boycott. When Boycott tried to get his nephew to deliver the mail, he was threatened. Soon the shopkeepers refused to sell anything to boycott. He had to get all of his supplies brought in by boat. Word of this began to spread. Within weeks, it was being reported in the London Times,

and it was even being reported overseas. By November, the word boycott began being used regularly as a verb. Boycott then had a huge problem. The harvest had to be brought in, and he couldn't find anyone to ask. actually do the work. This had now become a major political issue. Fifty Protestants from Ulster volunteered to come down and bring in the crops. However, they had to hire a thousand police officers to protect them along the way. Even though the labor was free, the cost of the police protection was more than the value of the crops. Later, Boycott tried to go to Dublin, but he had great

difficulty because he couldn't find a driver. When he did get to Dublin, the hotel was threatened with a boycott for hosting Boycott. The actions taken again to boycotts spread across Ireland, and there were dozens of cases of boycotts taking place against other landlords. These boycotts drove Parliament to take action. In April of 1881, the Irish Land Law Act was passed. It granted the three Fs, including setting a minimum lease of 15 years instead of the single year leases which were the norm. It was one of the most important pieces of legislation passed in Parliament in decades. Obviously, the word boycott has become a part of the English language. There have been countless boycotts against all sorts of people and

organizations for all sorts of reasons. The word appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1888, just eight years after the word was first coined. But who did first coin the term? According to legend, it was Father John O'Malley, who was active in the Land League. The story was told by one James Redpath, who recounted the conversation he had with Father O'Malley. He noted, I said I'm bothered about a word. What is it? asked Father John. Well, I said, when the people ostracize a land grabber, we call it social excommunication. But we ought to have an entirely different word to signify ostracism applied to a landlord or land agent like boycott. Austricism won't do. The peasantry would not know the meaning of the word, and I can't think of any

other. No, said Father John, ostracism wouldn't do. He looked down, tapped his big forehead, and said, How would it do to call it to boycott him? Unquote. And just like that, a word was born. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com. There is content only available to supporters,

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