Can you imagine being under the control of a government that has complete control of the economy, imposes huge taxes on its citizens, and is led by a bumbling, forgetful, leader and his assistant who is totally incompetent and unprepared for the job? All this, while completely ignoring the wishes of the people.
Do you think I am talking about our current situation here in the US? Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Guess what. These are exactly the same conditions that our forefathers experienced under King George III and his Prime Minister, Lord North, in the years leading up to the time of the American Revolution.
Now believe it or not, our forefathers did not immediately take up guns to fight the King. They were much smarter than that. They knew there was no way a handful of colonists could defeat the largest military fore in the world at the time.
Yet, they came up with an amazing method of resistance that got the immediate attention of England and the British Parliament and forced the King and his Prime Minister to back off.
What was their secret weapon?
For that answer, we need a little history.
In 1651, the British Parliament, in the first of what became known as the Navigation Acts, declared that only English ships would be allowed to bring goods into England, and that the North American colonies could only export its commodities, such as tobacco and sugar, to England.
This effectively prevented the colonies from trading with other European countries. The act was followed by several others that imposed additional limitations on colonial trade and increased customs duties. Now came the secret weapon.
They called them Nonimportation Agreements, today, we call them boycotts.
Nonimportation Agreements, (1765–75), were a way to force British recognition of political rights through the application of economic pressure.
At the time, the colonists had suffered under the Navigation Acts, The Stamp Act of 1765 (a tax on cards, dice, newspapers and legal documents), and the Townshend Acts 1767, (a tax on paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea). C
Colonial nonimportation associations were now organized to boycott all English goods.
In each case, British merchants and manufacturers suffered huge reductions in trade with the colonies and they now put pressure on Parliament to lift the restrictions on the colonies.
Guess what folks? It worked! The British businessmen marched on Parliament and said , “You idiots are costing us a fortune!”
Parliament, facing a hostile electorate, repealed the acts.
Now, where did we get this term boycott?
Simply put, a boycott is a protest where the protesters do not buy a product or give money to a company.
Instead of buying a certain product, they might also buy another, very similar product from a different company.
The word boycott comes from the name of English Captain Charles Boycott.
Boycott was in charge of looking after the land of a landlord in County Mayo, Ireland (40,000 acres).
In 1880, the Irish tenants (those who rented) wanted their rent lowered.
Boycott refused, and threw them out of the land they had rented.
The Irish Land League then proposed that instead of becoming violent, everyone in the community should stop doing business with Captain Boycott. The captain was soon isolated.
No one helped him with the harvest, no one worked in his stables or his house. Local businessmen no longer traded with him, even the postman no longer delivered his mail.
The Boycott affair was big news in Ireland, England, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
His name’s transformation into a common term is attributed to a local priest, who suggested using “boycott” to describe what was happening because “ostracize” was too complicated a word for the local peasantry.
Boycotting spread across Ireland. The word was adopted elsewhere, including non English-speaking countries.
The new word was included in the first edition of A New English Dictionary Based on Historical Principles (1888), later known as the Oxford English Dictionary.
And so Captain Boycott lives on, having unwillingly lent his name to a time-honored tactic.
So let’s go back to our story:
American cities in the colonies, now implemented boycotts to resist unpopular British policies.
The use of raw materials, goods produced in the colonies, and Yankee ingenuity were the order of the day.
It was during this time the American colonies experimented with the notion of being self-sufficient and not relying on the mother country.
The merchants and traders agreed to boycott British goods until the taxes on those goods were repealed. Some critical goods were exempt from the boycott such as salt, and hemp and duck canvases. Smuggling was widespread.
This was in direct violation of the Navigation Acts. Almost every American community benefited from or participated in the smuggling of illegal goods obtained from Dutch, French, and Spanish merchants.
Smuggling was not only a cheaper alternative to taxed British goods, but also served as an effective means to resist and undermine British policies. Boston was rife with smuggled goods and smugglers.
Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and Paul Revere were all known as notorious Boston Patriot smugglers and were all proponents of the use of non-importation agreements and similar boycott tactics.
The Stamp Act was repealed because of joint boycotts by American colonies.
New York merchants first implemented the boycott to protest the Stamp Act and they were able to persuade the merchants of other cities to do the same.
Boston was one of the cities New York merchants persuaded to participate in the boycott agreement to combat the Stamp Act.
As a result of the successful boycott and pressure from British merchants who were losing a fortune, Britain gave in and finally repealed the Stamp Act.
The impact of the Boston boycotts, and all similar agreements, were significant.
Approximately sixty merchants and traders signed the agreement on August 1, 1768, and within two weeks, all but sixteen of Boston’s merchants, traders, and business owners had joined the boycott.
Boston tradesmen, artisans, and other business owners happily signed the agreement in hopes the boycott would generate business for them.
Within months, almost every port and region within the Thirteen Colonies adopted similar boycotts to protest and undermine the Townshend Revenue Act, although many Southern merchants and traders with Loyalist leanings refused to cooperate.
Smuggling was rampant throughout the colonies. The effects felt by British merchants who traded with the American colonies were alarming.
Merchants lost money shipping their goods to the colonies where they would not be received.
More often than not the goods were never allowed ashore. If they were, they rotted on docks or in warehouses or were looted by the colonists.
The situation was a nightmare for customs officials who could not collect taxes on goods that were either not allowed ashore or were never sold.
In response to the Boston boycotts, Parliament ultimately repealed the Townshend Revenue Act taxes on all commodities except tea.
The King insisted Parliament keep at least one tax to prove the colonists had not completely won.
The Boston boycotts of 1768 and the subsequent repeal of the Townshend Revenue Act taxes on all commodities except tea was a major cause leading to the December 16, 1773 Boston Tea Party.
With the passing of the Tea Act in May of 1773, the tea tax under the Townshend Revenue Act was still in effect.
The tea tax which was not repealed, like the other taxes under the 1767 Townshend Revenue Act repealed in 1770, was one of the fundamental reasons why the Tea Act angered and mobilized colonists to protest and boycott the shipments of British East India Company tea.
If the tea tax would have been repealed in 1770 with all of the other taxes, in all probability the Boston Tea Party would have never happened.
So folks, the boycott agreements in the years prior to the American Revolution were a very effective tactic to protest British policies and demonstrated to other colonies the potential for united action.
As a result of the successful boycott Boston started with the 1768 Boston Non-Importation Agreement, the First Continental Congress in 1774 would pass a colony-wide prohibition against any trade with Britain.
Now I have to admit, the colonists did have a major problem.
During this period, 1/3 of the colonists supported King George, 1/3 Supported George Washington and the patriots, and finally 1/3 didn’t care one way or the other.
So how do you enforce a boycott? The answer?
The Sons of Liberty.
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Who Were the Sons of Liberty?
The Sons of Liberty was a secret underground society created due to the social and political fallout of the French and Indian War.
The war, which took place throughout the world, was just one part of a larger conflict called the Seven Years War.
The French and Indian War, coupled with the fighting throughout the globe, nearly pushed the British Empire to the brink of financial collapse due to the increased spending needed to fight an international war.
As a result, the British increased taxation among the colonies and stationed soldiers of the Crown within these colonies.
The British Empire needed money and goods for their empire, and they turned to the colonies for both. However, the Sons of Liberty made it their goal that the Empire received neither.
The British Parliament rationalized that the fighting in North America against the French was to protect the colonists and their interests, and thus, they should pay their share in taxes to help pay off their war-debt.
So, the solution was to forcefully quarter soldiers with American colonists via the Quartering Act. This quartering also increased the required funds needed in order to sustain the lives of thousands of British soldiers, who also had to be fed, out of pocket, by the colonists.
The first of many taxes forced upon the American people were the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act, which we talked about earlier.
Once the Stamp Act had passed, a secret group called the Loyal Nine, the precursor to the Sons of Liberty, gathered crowds around the famous Liberty Tree in Boston.
The crowd, angered by the Stamp Act and provoked by the encouragement of the Loyal Nine, began rioting throughout the streets of Boston.
These riots targeted the taxable goods and the tax collectors, which put many colonial officials at risk of being tarred and feathered or even killed.
The rioters also destroyed an immeasurable amount of property. In one case, Boston rioters raided the home of the Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson and stole an estimated £250,000 worth of his possessions.
The Loyal Nine, having sparked resistance, turned to publishing patriotic ideas in the Boston Gazette. Eventually, the Loyal Nine began signing their political dissent as ‘The Sons of Liberty’ thus establishing a much larger resistance group.
What was originally organized in Boston by a local brewer turned politician, Samuel Adams, quickly snowballed into a larger network of resistance to the British Crown. With the coordination of various Sons of Liberty chapters, the Stamp Act was repealed within one year of it being enacted.
However, this victory came at a price. The British Parliament passed the Declaratory Act when they repealed the Stamp Act. The Declaratory Act was more of a formal threat than an actual piece of legislation, as the Act stated that the British King and Parliament have the power to enact any and all legislation onto the colonies. This Act only served to reinforce the Sons of Liberty’s idea of “No Taxation Without Representation,” as written by a fellow member, James Otis Jr.
Under Samuel Adams and other members of the Sons of Liberty, the boycott was enforced throughout Boston and the surrounding Massachusetts area.
Anyone who dared to sell British goods risked their store being vandalized or worse.
Even their physical safety was at risk as the Sons of Liberty turned to violence to threaten shopkeepers that did not comply with the boycott.
Eventually, the patriotic resistance to British rule became too much to handle and revolution and war was inevitable. When lawmakers of Virginia gathered in 1775 to discuss negotiations with the British King, Sons of Liberty member, Patrick Henry exclaimed to the Second Virginia Convention “Give me liberty or give me death!”. Thus, cementing the American stance for independence from British rule and initiating the American commitment to the Revolutionary War.
When colonial legislatures opposed British policies, many King appointed governors simply dissolved those assemblies. Unofficial groups such as local committees, county-wide conventions, and congresses quickly became central to patriot organizing.
They relied on economic networks that included farmers, traders, artisans, working men, and women to create a new political movement.
The inclusive nature of the movement seemed to show that ordinary free people were capable of having a stronger voice in politics.
So there you have it folks. When faced with a government completely out of control, our forefathers turned to boycotts and it worked.
Would the same tactic work today? What if everyone refused to simply not watch ABC news, or patronize a certain coffee shop, or eat a certain brand of ice cream?
It worked in the 1700’s, would it work now?