Book review: Insurrection, by James Hunter

Everyone knows of the terrible Irish famine caused by the blight that destroyed the potato crop in 1846-7. Hundreds of thousands died and like numbers of wretched and semi-starved survivors emigrated, most to the USA. The simultaneous famine from the same cause in the Western Isles and North-East of Scotland is less well-known, less generally remembered, partly because the death toll, though horribly large, was much lower than in Ireland, partly because of organised resistance in Caithness, Wick and Pulteney and in the burghs and ports around the Moray Firth to the new economic doctrine of free trade.