Major agrarian crisis in the Scottish Highlands from 1846 to 1857
Highland Potato Famine Gaiseadh a' bhuntàta
Cross-section of a blighted potato tuber
Country
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Location
Scotland
Period
1846–1856
Causes
Policy failure, potato blight
The Highland Potato Famine (Scottish Gaelic: Gaiseadh a' bhuntàta) was a period of 19th-century Highland and Scottish history (1846 to roughly 1856) over which the agricultural communities of the Hebrides and the western Scottish Highlands (Gàidhealtachd) saw their potato crop (upon which they had become over-reliant) repeatedly devastated by potato blight. It was part of the wider food crisis facing Northern Europe caused by potato blight during the mid-1840s, whose most famous manifestation is the Great Irish Famine, but compared with its Irish counterpart, it was much less extensive (the population seriously at risk was never more than 200,000 – and often much less[1]: 307 ) and took many fewer lives as prompt and major charitable efforts by the rest of the United Kingdom ensured relatively little starvation.
The terms on which charitable relief was given, however, led to destitution and malnutrition amongst its recipients. A government enquiry could suggest no short-term solution other than reduction of the population of the area at risk by emigration to Canada or Australia. Highland landlords organised and paid for the emigration of more than 16,000 of their tenants and a significant but unknown number paid for their own passage. Evidence suggests that the majority of Highlanders who permanently left the famine-struck regions emigrated, rather than moving to other parts of Scotland.[2]: 197-210 It is estimated that about a third of the population of the western Scottish Highlands emigrated between 1841 and 1861.
^Devine, T M (2018). The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0241304105.
^Cite error: The named reference Devine 1995 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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