Olivier Esteve analyses how boycotts work

"Over the past few weeks, not a day has gone by without talk of a 'boycott', whether the issue be the Beijing Olympic Games, or the Paris book fair which focused on the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel", comments the French historian Olivier Esteves. "Boycotting has always been, with the odd exception (Nazi Germany's boycott of Jewish shops), the struggle of weak against strong, the weapon of a population that can only count on its number to face up to a power judged excessive and unfair, whether political (government) or economic (multinational). Officially born in 1880 in an Ireland submitted to English rule, boycotting is historically linked to major anti-colonial struggles. ... Whether economic (Gandhi and the boycott of fabric imported from the UK), social ... or political ..., this kind of ban rests upon the dynamic of numbers."

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