Pre-1880

• British abolitionists call upon the public to refrain from purchasing sugar and rum sourced from the slave plantations of the West Indies[1].
• The American boycott of British goods (also known as The Boston Tea Party) ultimately leads to the American Revolution[2].

1880-Irish

Land Wars

The word “boycott” enters the lexicon, as a result of the social ostracization enforced upon Captain Charles Boycott, a land agent, by the Irish Land League in order to push for rent reductions [3].

1905-1931

Boycotts of Japan

As a result of the outrage towards Imperial Japan’s expansionist designs set out in the Twenty-One Demands, the public boycotted Japanese goods. The intelligentsia called for another boycott in 1919. Yet another boycott was prompted by the Jinan incident in 1928.[4]

1956-Olympic

Boycott

Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq boycott the 1965 Olympics, as a result of the Suez Crisis. Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland boycott as a consequence of the Soviet invasion of Hungary[5].

1955/1956

Montgomery

Bus Boycott

One of the manifestations of the Jim Crow Laws was the segregation of public transport in the Southern states. Following Rosa Parks’ arrest for refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger, city-wide boycotts are called for to push for public transit reform[6].

1958-1980

Apartheid

South Africa

The ANC calls for an academic and cultural boycott of South Africa in 1958. In the ensuing years, small-scale boycotts are launched before British academics call for a boycott in 1965. A cultural boycott follows in 1968 and finally sanctions in 1980[7].

1965-1970

Delano Grape

Strike

Filipino and Latino farm workers join together to protest poor pay and working conditions, leading to a country-wide consumer boycott of the table grapes the workers cultivated[8].

2005

BDS Founded

BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanctions) is founded as a Palestinian-led movement, based on the pursuit of universal human rights and opposing the settler colonialism that is inherent to Zionism[9].

1. Fox, W. (1791) An address to the people of Great Britain, on the utility of refraining from the use of West India sugar and rum. Sunderland, England: Printed and sold by T. Reed. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-a7bc-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
   
2. McDonnell, M. A. (2012). HISTORY, MYTH, AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA [Review of Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America; The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History, by B. L. Carp & J. Lepore]. Reviews in American History, 40(2), 215–221. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41678550
3. Moran, G. (1985) ‘The Origins and Development of Boycotting’, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, 40, pp. 49–64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25535540
4. Kennedy, L. (2021) 6 times the Olympics were boycotted, History.com. Available at: https://www.history.com/news/olympic-boycotts (Accessed: 17 March 2024).
5. Wang, H.C. (1933) ‘International law and Anti-Japanese boycott’, Pacific Affairs, 6(7), p. 373. doi:10.2307/2751442.
6. Carson, Clayborne. “To Walk in Dignity: The Montgomery Bus Boycott.” OAH Magazine of History 19, no. 1 (2005): 13–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163735.
7. South Africa’s academic and cultural boycott (2017) South African History Online. Available at: https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-africas-academic-and-cultural-boycott (Accessed: 16 March 2024).
8. Chavez, C. (1976) ‘The California Farm Workers’ Struggle’, The Black Scholar, 7(9), pp. 16–19. doi:10.1080/00064246.1976.11413833.
9. Barghouti, O. (2011) BDS: Boycott, divestment, sanctions: The global struggle for Palestinian rights. Chicago, Illinois: Haymarket Books.
   

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