Insurrection: Scotland's Famine Winter Hunter James
Insurrection: Scotland's Famine Winter Hunter James When Scotland's 1846 potato crop was wiped out by blight, the country was plunged into crisis. Further east, meanwhile, towns and villages from…
Specifikacia Insurrection: Scotland's Famine Winter Hunter James
Insurrection: Scotland's Famine Winter Hunter James
When Scotland's 1846 potato crop was wiped out by blight, the country was plunged into crisis. Further east, meanwhile, towns and villages from Aberdeen to Wick and Thurso, rose up in protest at the cost of the oatmeal that replaced potatoes as people's basic foodstuff.Oatmeal's soaring price was blamed on the export of grain by farmers and landlords cashing in on even higher prices elsewhere. In the Hebrides and the West Highlands a huge relief effort came too late to prevent starvation and death.
The army fired on one set of rioters. As a bitter winter gripped and families feared a repeat of the calamitous famine then ravaging Ireland, grain carts were seized, ships boarded, harbors blockaded, a jail forced open, the military confronted. Savage sentences were imposed on others.
But thousands-strong crowds also gained key concessions. Above all they won cheaper