Despite these changes the highlands remained very poor and traditional, with few connections to the uplift of the Scottish Enlightenment and little role in the Industrial Revolution. A handful of powerful families, typified by the dukes of Argyll, Atholl, Buccleuch, and Sutherland, owned large amounts of land and controlled local political, legal and economic affairs. Particularly after the end of the boom created by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815), these landlords needed cash to maintain their position in London society, and had less need of soldiers. They turned to money rents, displaced farmers to raise sheep, and downplayed the traditional patriarchal relationship that had historically sustained the clans. Potato blight reached the Highlands in 1846, where 150,000 people faced disaster because their food supply was largely potatoes (with a little herring, oatmeal and milk). They were rescued by an effective emergency relief system that stands in dramatic contrast to the failures of relief in Ireland. As the famine continued, landlords, charities and government agencies provided "assisted passages" for destitute tenants to emigrate to Canada and Australia; in excess of 16,000 people emigrated, with most travelling in 1851.