Inverness-shire, historic county of northern Scotland. It is Scotland’s largest historic county and includes a section of the central Highlands, Glen Mor, and a portion of the Highlands to the north. It also encompasses several islands of the Inner and Outer Hebrides, such as Skye, Harris (part of Lewis and Harris), North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, Barra, and the Small Islands. Those of the Outer Hebrides (Harris, the Uists, Benbecula, and Barra) are part of the Western Isles council area, and the remainder of the county (including the Inner Hebrides and the entire mainland area) lies within the Highland council area.
Cairns, stone circles, and brochs (dry stone towers) provide evidence of prehistoric settlement in the county. When the area entered the historical record in Roman times, it was the home of the Picts. Inverness was the capital of the Picts under King Brude when St. Columba arrived about ad 565 to promote Christianity. When Scotland was united in subsequent centuries, Inverness-shire formed part of the province of Moray. The county came under the control of a succession of landowning dynasties during the Middle Ages, including the MacIntoshes, the Frasers, the Chisholms, and the Grants. Along the Atlantic coast the MacDonalds, Camerons, and MacLeods were subject to the Lords of the Isles. During the 15th and 16th centuries, however, the Stuart kings used the influence of the chiefs in the growing clan system to exert control over Inverness-shire.
In the 17th and 18th centuries the county’s clans took different sides in the religious and political controversies surrounding the English Civil Wars and the Jacobite risings, and internecine strife shook Inverness-shire. The British government built Forts George, Augustus, and William and a system of military roads in the county in the late 17th and early 18th centuries to facilitate the area’s pacification. The government reduced the power of the chiefs and cleared the way for acquisition of much of the land by outsiders. These landlords forcibly evicted thousands of crofters (small-scale tenant subsistance farmers) in the “Highland clearances” of the early 19th century to create large sheep-farming estates. Large-scale emigration ensued to the Scottish Lowlands and to Canada, the United States, and Australia. Widespread popular sympathy for the crofters in Scotland brought protective legislation later in the century, but economic hardships caused crofters and other rural inhabitants to migrate to urban areas well into the 20th century. The development of tourism and the exploitation of North Sea oil during the 20th century, however, brought renewed economic vitality to parts of Inverness-shire.