In 1845-46, several regions of Western Europe were struck by potato blight or, in more scientific terminology, the fungus Phytophthora infestans. The impact of this lethal plant disease was most famously felt in Ireland. There, the massive and repeated failure of the potato, the country's prime crop of subsistence for the nation's poor rural masses, eventually resulted in the deaths of around one million men, women and children, mainly through famine-related diseases. Another 500,000 or more fled their native land to seek refuge and succour across the Atlantic and in Britain.

By any measure, this was indeed the worst human catastrophe in Western Europe in the 19th century. As a result, the immense tragedy in Ireland has tended to obscure even the existence of a 'potato famine' in Highland Scotland in the 1840s (though in reality it lasted from 1846 to c.1855: longer than the great crisis across the Irish Sea).

As a young lecturer, I recall asking an undergraduate class in history at Strathclyde University in the early 1970s whether there had also been a potato famine in Scotland in the same period as the infamous disaster in Ireland and, if so, why? The responses mainly consisted of blank or puzzled looks.

Of course, knowledge of modern Scottish history has increased dramatically since those days. In fact, last week I was honoured to join my friend and fellow historian Willie Orr in addressing a packed Bunessan Hall on the Isle of Mull on the Highland Potato Famine of the 19th century.

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The event was organised by the enterprising Ross of Mull Historical Society to commemorate that arduous and anxious time in the autumn of 1846, 180 years ago, when the first ominous signs of rot in the vital annual potato crop began to appear.

To my knowledge, this was the first public event in Scotland to mark this crucial episode in the history of the Highlands and Islands, successfully brought to fruition by a local community in the region.

I would also contend that the famine left a significantly........

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