Bud Light Wasn't the First: Major Boycotts that Changed History
The recent Bud Light boycott made headlines, but it was hardly the first time consumers have acted in organized protest.
In 2019, Keri Wiginton of Stacker, a data-driven news service, complied a list of history-changing boycotts.
While nearly all of Wiginton’s examples come from the modern era, some date to the 18th and 19th centuries.
In fact, the older the boycott, the likelier the possibility that it changed history.
Of the 30 boycotts on Wiginton’s list, the oldest is the 1773 Boston Tea Party.
Not to engage in historical pedantry, but the Tea Party itself did not amount to a boycott per se. It is best remembered as an act of civil disobedience — a tax revolt.
The Sons of Liberty who destroyed the tea had no particular quarrel with the East India Company that owned it.
Instead, those Boston rebels intended to defy Parliament’s authority by making sure no one could pay a tax on the tea.
Still, the Boston Tea Party did trigger a series of events that led to a genuine boycott: the Continental Association.
After British warships arrived in Boston Harbor in early 1774, Americans voluntarily refused to consume certain British imports.
Even this mild response to Britain’s blockade enraged Parliament and led directly to the American Revolution.
Wiginton also noted a 1791 sugar boycott in which an English merchant refused to sell sugar produced by Barbadian slaves.
Much like the Boston Tea Party, this episode rates as an important chain in a series of events that changed history.
For most of the 18th century, the British were the most active slave traders in the Atlantic world.
After the American Revolution, however, British public opinion turned sharply against the slave trade.
Parliament formally abolished the trade in 1807.
For decades thereafter, the British Royal Navy patrolled the western coast of Africa in a sincere and largely successful effort to destroy the trafficking of human beings.
The only other pre-20th century boycott on Wiginton’s list holds a special place in boycott history.
In 1880, a group of Irish tenants refused to work for a land agent who raised their rent.
The community joined in the protest against the greedy land agent.
“The mailman stopped bringing him his mail, and businesses in the area wouldn’t accept his money,” Wiginton wrote.
The land agent’s name? Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott, namesake of the organized consumer protest.
Two other boycotts, both from the early to mid-20th century, unquestionably changed history.
In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi led a successful protest against British colonial prohibitions on native Indian salt production.
Both the salt protest and especially the man himself helped shape the course of events that led to Indian independence in 1947.
In the U.S., the 20th century’s most important economic protest occurred in Montgomery, Alabama, where a 1955 bus boycott launched the national Civil Rights Movement.
On Dec. 1, 1955, activist Rosa Parks defied segregation laws by refusing to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger.
After her arrest, the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by 26-year-old Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a citywide bus boycott.
For more than a year, Montgomery’s black residents applied economic pressure by refusing to ride city buses.
The U.S. Supreme Court later declared the segregation laws unconstitutional.
Nearly all of Wiginton’s remaining examples date to the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In most cases, their historical importance does not measure up to those of the older boycotts.
Nonetheless, both the longevity of the practice and the volume of boycotts show that consumers acting in concert have always had considerable influence.
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