Origins
The word 'boycott' has one of the most precisely dateable origins in the English language.βββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ It was born in the autumn of 1880 in County Mayo, in the west of Ireland, and it was a common English word within a matter of weeks -- a velocity of lexical adoption that was remarkable even in the age of the telegraph.
Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832-1897) was an English land agent managing the estates of Lord Erne, an absentee landlord, near Lough Mask in County Mayo. The year 1880 was a time of acute agrarian tension in Ireland: poor harvests and economic hardship had left many tenant farmers unable to pay their rents, and the Irish National Land League, led by Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell, was organizing resistance to evictions.
When Boycott attempted to carry out evictions of tenants who had fallen behind on their payments, the Land League implemented a strategy proposed by Parnell himself: rather than violent resistance, the community would simply refuse all interaction with Boycott. His laborers stopped working his fields. Local shops refused to serve him. The blacksmith would not shoe his horses. The postman would not deliver his mail. Servants left his household. No one would speak to him or acknowledge his existence. He was, in effect, made a social and economic nonperson.
Development
The word emerged almost immediately. In September 1880, a journalist named James Redpath is often credited with first using 'boycott' as a verb in print, though the attribution is debated. What is certain is that by October 1880, Irish and English newspapers were regularly using 'to boycott' as a verb meaning to ostracize someone in this organized fashion. The Land League explicitly promoted the term, recognizing its propaganda value -- it was easier to say 'boycott him' than to describe the entire strategy each time.
The crisis in County Mayo escalated dramatically. With no local workers willing to harvest his crops, Boycott's situation became a national cause in Britain. In November 1880, fifty Orangemen from County Cavan and County Monaghan volunteered to travel to Mayo to bring in the harvest, escorted by over a thousand soldiers and Royal Irish Constabulary officers. The military expedition to protect fifty farm laborers harvesting one man's crops became an international news story, and the absurd disproportion between the military force and the agricultural task ensured maximum publicity for both Boycott's name and the Land League's tactics.
The harvest was brought in, but at a cost estimated at over ten thousand pounds -- far exceeding the value of the crops. Boycott left Ireland shortly afterward, returning to England. He lived until 1897 but never escaped the association with his own name. By the time of his death, 'boycott' had been adopted into French ('boycotter'), German ('boykottieren'), Spanish ('boicotear'), Italian ('boicottare'), Portuguese ('boicotar'), Dutch ('boycotten'), Russian ('Π±ΠΎΠΉΠΊΠΎΡΠΈΡΠΎΠ²Π°ΡΡ,' boikotirovat'), Japanese ('γγ€γ³γγ,' boikotto), and numerous other languages.
Later History
The word's grammar is notable. 'Boycott' is one of the few English words derived from a surname that functions as both a verb and a noun (one can 'boycott' a company, or 'join a boycott'). Other surname-derived verbs in English include 'lynch' (from Captain William Lynch), 'mesmerize' (from Franz Mesmer), and 'galvanize' (from Luigi Galvani), but 'boycott' is unusual in the speed of its adoption and the completeness of its internationalization.
The tactic of the boycott -- organized economic and social noncooperation -- proved enormously influential in subsequent political movements. The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956, the international boycott of South African goods during apartheid, and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement all employ the strategy and the word that originated in a dispute over tenant farming in western Ireland. Captain Boycott, who merely wished to collect his employer's rents, unwittingly gave his name to one of the most powerful tools of nonviolent resistance.