Charles Boycott, the ruthless British administrator whose surname became a verb

Boycott (and its forms boycott, boycott) is a term heard almost daily in reference to protests, obstruction or collective opposition against a product, an individual, an entity or a country.

It is an almost universal expression of the actions used by groups and collectivities around the world to hinder the development or operation of a labor, social, political or economic measure considered unfair.

The word first entered the English dictionary as boycott and from there the boycott in Spanish is derived. But its origin is in a real person: the English soldier Charles Cunningham Boycott.

In the late 19th century, Boycott was a British Army veteran who managed a landowner’s estate in northeastern Ireland and became involved in a dispute with the tenants who farmed the land over the rental conditions and costs he imposed.

The protest was not violent, but took the form of isolation and social, labor and economic exclusion of Boycott, and his crops suffered from having no one to harvest them.

In the late 1880s, the case was widely reported in British newspapers, which began using the surname to refer to the tenants’ tactics. Shortly afterward it found a place in the dictionaries of several languages.

Charles Cunningham Boycott was born in 1832 in Norfolk, England. The original surname was Boycatt, but for some unknown reason the family decided to change the spelling when Charles was 9 years old.

His interest in military life led him to enroll in the Royal Military Academy in 1848, but he was discharged in 1849 after failing a periodic exam. Nevertheless, His family paid good money to buy him a commission in a regimenta common practice at the time that allowed the enrollee to quickly achieve an officer rank.

But his interest in being a soldier soon waned and three years later he left the army with a view to becoming a landowner.

He moved to the island of Achill, off County Mayo in the northeast of Ireland, where he acquired land on which he prospered and did well farming in a hostile and challenging environment. He stayed there for 17 years, but he aspired to move to the mainland, closer to “civilization” and occupy better lands to farm.

His opportunity came in 1872, when John Crichton, Earl of Erne, who owned more than 15,000 hectares in Ireland, was looking for someone who could manage land in County Mayo. The contract included the use of about 250 hectares for cultivation, a good country house with stables and a boathouse.

The count preferred that Englishmen occupy positions of authority and be in charge of managing the leases of their lands. The nickname “captain”, probably imposed on Charles Boycott by his tenant farmers because of his rigid treatment and military background, was surely a favorable aspect for him receiving the contract.

According to biographers, Boycott believed in “the divine right” of masters, owners and landowners. She also had the tendency to behave as she pleased, without caring what others thought. His heavy-handedness and unpleasant personality made him very unpopular with the tenant farmers.

He had no problem evicting those who did not pay their rent on time and often imposed fines for the most insignificant transgressions, such as letting one of his animals wander around his land or arriving late for work. The fines sometimes exceeded their salaries.

In the late 1870s, Ireland was hit by a series of crop failures that pointed to famine.. A disastrous situation for tenant farmers who were already having difficulties paying their rents.

In 1879, the son of one such tenant in County Mayo formed the National Agrarian League of Ireland with a view to reducing rents and stopping evictions. The league was also linked to the Irish independence movement, but its ultimate goal was for farmers to own the land they farmed.

The tenants of the Duke of Erne’s lands requested a 25% reduction, but the Duke only granted them 10%. and allowed Boycott to recover any delinquent debts as he could and evict those who did not pay.

Three families were evicted, which led the Agrarian League to launch actions to respond to these measures. Parliamentarian Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the league, urged his followers in a speech to evade and despise at all times and places anyone who has evicted another being, “leave him alone… isolate him from the rest of the country, as if he were a leper”.

Boycott found himself segregated from the community. No one bought his goods and no one sold him. He could not harvest his land or enter into any business with the locals. Even the postman stopped delivering his mail.

Faced with the prospect of their crops rotting, some sympathetic authorities raised funds to organize a rescue expedition of about 50 men to harvest the harvest. They had to send almost 900 soldiers to protect the farmers from possible violence from the locals.

Taking into account the movement, work and maintenance of that force, The cost of the operation was about 10,000 pounds sterling at the time to rescue crops that were barely worth 350.

The Boycott affair became big news in Ireland, England and other English-speaking countries. Reports of “boycotts” began to emerge throughout Ireland and the measure dramatically empowered the peasantry.

It is not known exactly when the word “boycott” entered the lexicon, but since there was no exact word that could describe the action of isolating, intimidating and creating a taboo around someone or something, the word was incorporated into the English Dictionary of Oxford in 1888.

“Boycott” was eventually adopted into several other languages ​​that also had no comparable words. and continues to be frequently used to describe all types of actions of this type, but mainly in the work or political sphere.

As for Charles Cunningham Boycott, the discredited “captain” quietly returned to England a few months later, where he died in 1897, although his surname has continued to live on for many more years, projecting itself into the future.

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