The boycott is a more indirect type of non-cooperation than the strike,
in most cases.[41] This word originated in Ireland in 1880 when a
Captain Boycott, an agent for an Irish landlord, refused the demands of
the tenants on the estate. In retaliation they threatened his life,
forced his servants to leave him, tore down his fences, and cut off his
food supplies. The Irish Land League, insisting that the land of Ireland
should belong to its people, used this method of opposition in the years
that followed. Its members refused to deal with peasants or tradesmen
who sided with the government, but they used acts of violence and
intimidation as well as economic pressure. The government employed
15,000 military police and 40,000 soldiers against the people, but they
succeeded only in filling the jails. The struggle might well have won
land for the Irish peasant, if Parnell, who had become leader of the
Irish movement, had not agreed to accept the Gladstone Home Rule Bill of
1886 in exchange for calling off the opposition in Ireland. The Bill was
defeated in Parliament and the Irish problem continued.[42]
In later usage, the word "boycott" has been applied almost exclusively
to the refusal of economic cooperation. Organized labor in America used
the boycott against the goods of manufacturers who refused to deal with
unions, and it is still used in appeals to the public not to patronize
stores or manufacturers who deal unfairly with labor.
The idea of economic sanctions, which played so large a part in the
history of the League of Nations in its attempts to deal with those who
disregarded decisions of the League, is essentially similar to the
boycott. In fact much of the thinking of the pacifist movement between
the two wars maintained that economic sanctions would provide a
non-violent but coercive substitute for war, in settling international
controversies.[43]