Mapping Boycotts from Ireland to Palestine: The Biography of a Tactic

The tactic of boycott, historically, has been used by the dispossessed against the powerful. Boycott has deep roots in global anti-imperialist struggles, whose rich and fierce history is often elided over precisely because it has been particularly successful. Deriving its name from Charles Boycott, who as an English land agent in County Mayo terrorized cultivators only to have them lead a boycott of the imperialist by refusing to work on his land or sell him provisions in the village. In India the tactic is associated with the first nationalist mass uprising in Bengal in 1905 and then wielded by Gandhi to great effect. This paper explores the history of Boycotts as a global tool against imperial forms and tries to assess why it arises organically from social movements at particular moments. I will trace the lineage of the tactic from Ireland, India, and South Africa through to the BDS movement against Israel, in an effort to write a biography of the tactic, rather than life histories of "great men" who used it.