tilthat

TIL that the word Boycott is named after an Irish landlord named Charles Boycott. After Boycott attempted to evict 11 tenants, the local community decided to shun him. Workers would not work for him, traders would not trade with him, and the postman would not deliver the post.

via reddit.com

argumate

Charles Cancelled

glittermobboss

Except he wasn’t Irish. He was an English land agent who oversaw Irish tenants in Ireland for the English absentee landlord, Lord Erne.

That’s important. This scenario came about because the English colonised Ireland, took the land from the Irish and then rented the land back to the Irish again at crippling and exhorbitant rents. This gave rise to the Land War.

The Irish National Land League (Irish: Conradh na Talún) was the Irish political organisation that sought to help poor Irish tenant farmers. Its primary aim was to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked on. They helped Boycott’s workers to organise against him.

I’ve seen this “fun fact” thrown around the place a lot, and it never includes the fact that Boycott was the English agent of an English landlord, in a system that was oppressing the colonised Irish people. The above is an example of Irish people working together to beat their oppressors.

Source: tilthat