THE CURIOUS LEGEND OF MR. BOYCOTT
Nowadays that a lot of Spanish nationalists are doing
a dangerous and disgusting campaign against the Catalan ?Cava? (Champagne) and
call for a boycott to other Catalan products, it is curious to see that the
word ?boycott? has an Irish origin because of a nationalist revolt against a
supposedly unfair treatment by the British laws.
According to the Britannica, Charles Cunningham Boycott (1832-1897) was a British army captain who
was an estate manager in Ireland during the agitation over the Irish land
question. He is the eponym for the verb and common noun boycott. After retiring
from the army, Boycott in 1873 became agent for the 3rd Earl of
Erne?s estates in County Mayo. The Land League formed in Ireland in 1879 when
bad harvests made a famine likely, told Boycott in 1880 that he must reduce
rents by 25 per cent. In September 1880, after Boycott had attempted to serve
writs of eviction, the president of the Land League, Irish nationalist
statesman Charles Stewart Panell, urged that, without resort to violence, the
tenants should avoid any communication with those who refused their demand for
lower rents. Parnell?s policy wwas first used against Boycott, who,
consequently, was forced to employ workers from lster, guarded by soldiers, to
harvest his crops. He left Ireland the same year and eventually became an agent
for esates in Suffolk. Conditions in Ireland quickly eased after William Ewart
Gladstone?s Land Act of 1881 instituted fair-rent tribunals.
Us ha agradat aquest article? Compartiu-lo!