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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.
The European potato failure was a food crisis caused by potato blight that struck Northern and Western Europe in the mid-1840s. The time is also known as the Hungry Forties . While the crisis produced excess mortality and suffering across the affected areas, particularly affected were the Scottish Highlands , with the Highland Potato Famine and ...
In the 1840 and 1850s Scotland suffered its last major subsistence crisis, [45] when the potato blight that caused the Great Famine of Ireland reached the Highlands in 1846. [46] This gave rise to the second phase of the Highland clearances, when landlords provided assisted passages for their tenants to emigrate in a desperate effort to rid ...
Scottish agriculture in general modernised much more rapidly than in England and, to a large extent, elsewhere in Europe. The growing cities of the Industrial Revolution presented an increased demand for food; [c] land came to be seen as an asset to meet this need, and as a source of profit, rather than a means of support for its resident ...
There is less than 0.5 million people in the Scottish Highlands and islands today and a huge % of those people are English and lowland Scots. Compare that to how Ireland (eventually) bounced back. The Highland famine effectively ended an entire people and way of life, as horrific as the Irish famine was the same can't be said to the same extent.
In 1846, the Highland Potato Famine caused a crisis in the Highlands and the islands of Western Scotland, an area already struggling with overpopulation [2] [3] [4] and the upheavals of the Highland Clearances. The deaths from starvation were so high that, in 1848–1849, the government delivered shipments of oatmeal to locations along the ...
The introduction of the potato to Scotland in 1739 greatly improved the diet of the peasantry. Enclosures began to displace the runrig system and free pasture. There was increasing specialisation, with the Lothians became a major centre of grain, Ayrshire of cattle breeding and The Borders of sheep. [7]
The Scottish Food and Drink Fortnight is a nationwide festival in Scotland, designed to celebrate all aspects of Scottish food and drink, including its variety, producers and history. The event takes place at the start of September and is organised by Scotland Food & Drink and VisitScotland. [1]