Abstract
This public lecture considers the impact of the 1840s European potato blight on Scotland. It focuses especially on the Highlands, where phytophthora infestans exposed the people of the region to acute life-threatening crisis. Throughout, comparisons and contrasts are drawn with the Great Irish Famine ( an Gorta Mór) which has attracted much more scholarly and popular attention than the famine in Scotland. One key question is why did the Highlands not starve, unlike the appalling tragedy over the Irish Sea? Devine further describes how Highland famine triggered an unprecedented scale and intensity of ‘clearance’, forced removal of people from their traditional holdings, which emptied entire districts of their people. He concludes by querying whether the era of Clearance ended with the removal of forced mass eviction, or whether other strategies by the landed class served to compel Highlanders to leave.
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