The Highland Potato Famine 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 saw their potato crop (upon which they had become over-reliant) repeatedly devastated by potato blight. It was part of the wider food crisis facing Northern Europe caused by potato blight during the mid-1840s, whose most famous manifestation is the Great Irish Famine, but compared to its Irish counterpart it was much less extensive (the population at risk was never more than 200,000) and took many fewer lives (prompt and major charitable efforts by the rest of the United Kingdom ensured that there was relatively little starvation). The terms on which charitable relief was given, however, led t