Charles Boycott

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Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott (March 12, 1832—June 19, 1897) was a British land agent whose ostracism by his local community in Ireland as part of a campaign for workers' rights in 1880 gave the English language the verb to boycott, meaning "to ostracise".

Charles Boycott was born in Norfolk in 1832. He came to Ireland to work as a land agent for Lord Erne (John Crichton, 3rd Earl Erne), the local landowner in the Lough Mask area of County Mayo.

In 1880, as part of its campaign for the "Three Fs" (fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale) to protect tenants from exploitation, the Irish Land League under Michael Davitt withdrew the local labour required to save the harvest on Lord Erne's estate. When Boycott tried to undermine the campaign, the League launched a campaign of isolation against him in the local community. Neighbours would not talk to him. Shops would not serve him. In church, people would not talk to him or sit near him.

The campaign against Boycott became a cause célèbre in the British press, with newspapers sending correspondents to the West of Ireland to highlight what they viewed as the victimisation of a servant of a peer of the realm by Irish peasants. Fifty Orangemen from County Cavan travelled to Lord Erne's estate to save the harvest, while a regiment of troops and over 1,000 men of the Royal Irish Constabulary were deployed to protect the harvesters. The whole bizarre episode was estimated to have cost the British government and others over £10,000 (R. F Foster, Modern Ireland) to harvest approximately £350 worth of potatoes, according to Captain Boycott's estimate of the harvest value.

Boycott left Ireland on December 1 of the same year. His name however became immortalised by the creation of the verb to boycott, meaning fundamentally "to ostracise".

Boycotting became a standard method of non-violent civic and political disobedience, practised by Mahatma Gandhi, by anti-Nazis during World War II and during the civil rights campaigns in the United States and Northern Ireland in the 1960s.

Boycott's story was portrayed in the 1947 film Captain Boycott.