Today, President Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods came into force, with Canadian retaliatory tariffs coming online at the same time. It also saw the removal of US liquor from shelves in Ontario, a effective boycott.
The term “boycott” derives from the name of a landowner, Charles Cunningham Boycott, who was one of the first to be ostracised as a landgrabber in September 1880, a technique advocated by Charles Stewart Parnell only days before. Boycott’s servants left, labourers would not work for him and local traders refused to deal with him. The term was coined by the parish priest of Kilmolara, Co. Mayo, and was publicised internationally by American journalist, James Redpath. From there it was adopted by advocates and opponents alike.1
The practice of rejecting goods, however, has an even longer history. In 1720, Jonathan Swift advocated that the people of Ireland burn everything English except their coal in his pamphlet A Proposal for the universal use of Irish manufacture2.
The previous months had seen fierce debate over two legal measures, the Act of Toleration (which among other things allowed Francis Hutcheson to teach a school in Dublin) and the Declaratory Act, which fundamentally altered the position of the Irish Parliament. Swift wrote of these acts:
“I should wish the Parliament had thought fit to have suspended their Regulation of Church Matters, and Enlargements of the Prerogative […] and instead of those great Refinements in Politicks and Divinity, had amused Themselves and their Committees, a little, with the State of the Nation.”
However we must suspect some irony here. One argument for the Act of Toleration was the emigration of Protestant Dissenters due to the unpromising economic outlook. That outlook was made worse by the constitutional position which was finally settled by the Declaratory Act.
Prior to the revolutionary settlement of 1688, Ireland was subject to the English, and later British crown. It was not subject, however, to the English parliament. The revolutionary settlement essentially gave the powers of the Crown to the English Parliament to exercise. It did not explicitly take account of Ireland. Not for the first or last time, Ireland created a dilemma (or in this case a trilemma) for England. Either Ireland should have a relationship to the Crown similar to that of the English Parliament, or both Parliaments should be united (a union of England and Ireland), or the Irish parliament should be subservient to the English Parliament.
Westminster acted as if the third option was in place. Attempts to stop the woolen export trade, however, faced opposition, and (spurred on by a pamphlet, allegedly by John Toland), William Molyneux wrote “The Case of Ireland” arguing that the Irish Parliament was subservient to the Crown only, not Westminster. At the same time many argued that a union of Ireland and England would be beneficial, with William King (soon to be Arhbishop of Dublin) being an early advocate. Swift’s disappointment with the 1707 act of union with Scotland, rather than Ireland, expressed itself in a metaphorical melodrama The injured Lady (online) and a poem, On the Union, which asked with incredulity “Who ever yet a union saw/Of kingdoms without faith or law?” (the Church of Scotland being Presbyterian, unlike the Anglican Churches of England and Ireland).
It became clear over the intervening decade that Ireland would not enter Union with Great Britain, meaning no immediate relief in terms of trading conditions (Ireland could not legally trade directly with the colonies) or native industries (the woolen industry continued to be hobbled for the sake of English wool). The Declaratory Act (1719) cemented this by formally making the Irish Parliament subservient to Westminster, despite the efforts of a disparate group including bishops, including Edward Synge of Tuam and William King of Dublin, the anticlerical Whig Robert Molesworth and persona non grata John Toland. Ireland had no power to take actions of which Westminster did not approve.
That failure led to Swift’s call to arms, and the launching of a new genre to answer the Irish Question of the day: how could the country be brought to prosperity? Swift’s answer has affinities with the Old Whig view that luxuries should be avoided. He asks why, instead of acts of toleration and subservience, the Irish Parliament had not instead
thought fit to make a resolution, nemine contradicente, against wearing any cloth or stuff in their families, which were not of the growth and manufacture of this kingdom? What if they had extended it so far as utterly to exclude all silks, velvets, callicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies; and declared, that whoever acted otherwise should be deemed and reputed an enemy to the nation?
Swift goes on to quote a predecessor of Edward Synge, repeating a “pleasant observation”:
that Ireland would never be happy, till a law were made for burning every thing that came from England, except their people and their coals. I must confess, that as to the former, I should not be sorry if they would stay at home; and for the latter, I hope, in a little time we shall have no occasion for them.
Swift also criticises the popular bias for both goods and cultural productions from London, the way governors tended “to look down upon this kingdom, as if it had been one of their colonies of outcasts in America”, and the rack-renting of Irish tenants.
Swift’s measure was primarily a protectionist one, seeking to retain the Irish market, the only one readily available to Irish manufacturers, for Irish manufacturers. But it is equally clear that he recognises a lack of respect for the Kingdom of Ireland that he deplores. His pamphlet started a vogue for pamphlets suggesting how the Irish economy might be revived. However the Irish economy remained poor, culminating in a famine in 1740-1 which killed between between 13% and 20% of the population.
However the Irish economy did improve, with Ireland regaining legislative independence in 1782. This ended in 1801, when the Act of Union came into force, creating the UK from Great Britain and Ireland.
Swift’s motto was revived during the Irish trade war, the Economic War (1932–38), when the Irish Free State sought to “burn everything English except its coal”, alongside retaliatory tariffs placed on UK goods in reply to tariffs placed on Irish goods due to non-payment of land annuities.
It is an interesting coincidence that two men of the cloth, both in Co. Mayo, came up with the key Irish slogan for the Anglo-Irish Trade War, and the word to describe the activity of rejecting trade and other interaction. It remains to be seen if Canada advocates the burning of all American goods, except their LNG.
Featured Image: Drying Peat (Turf (peat) being air dried in ‘footings’ near Knocknaree) on geograph.ie.
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