EP067 HIGHLANDS & HARDSHIP

About this episode

This episode examines the overlooked realities of the Highland Potato Famine of 1846 in Scotland, contrasting it with the Great Hunger in Ireland.

Summary While the Great Hunger in Ireland remains one of the most documented tragedies of the nineteenth century, the story of what happened across the Irish Sea in the Scottish Highlands is often overlooked or romanticised. In this episode, we strip away the Hollywood imagery of baronial halls and tartan myths to look at the real experience of the Highland Potato Famine of 1846. We explore the “Geographic Trap” of the Highland Boundary Fault, the Coastal Squeeze of the Clearances, and the legal engineering of the 1845 Poor Law that left the starving with no right to relief. Using the latest research from Sir Tom Devine and Michael Lynch, we investigate the Empathy Gap between the absentee Landlords and the crofters clinging to the soil in the Western Isles. As the “Year of Railway Mania” gripped the England and the Lowlands of Scotland, a biological rot was creeping north. This is a story of how a system that prioritised economic efficiency over human survival turned a bad harvest into a national catastrophe. Listen & Follow Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/APPLEAgeofVictoriaPodcast Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/SPOTIFYAgeofVictoriaPodcast Website…

Topics covered

• Highland Potato Famine
• Irish history
• Scottish history
• 19th century tragedies
• economic efficiency
• landlord-crofter relations

Keywords

• Geographic Trap
• Coastal Squeeze
• Poor Law
• Empathy Gap
• Railway Mania

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Geographic Trap, To the Ends of the Earth, Scotland: A New History, The Oxford Companion to Scottish History, The Highland Potato Famine of the 1840, National Humiliation and the Great Hunger: Fast and Famine, The Land Question in nineteenth, The Folklore of Northern Scotland: Five Discourses on Cultural Representation, Folklore, Racist Reversals: Appropriating Racial Typology in Late Nineteenth-Century

Places: Ireland, the Irish Sea, the Scottish Highlands, Hollywood, the Highland Boundary Fault, the Western Isles, England, Lowlands, Scotland, Highlands

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