Argyllshire, historic county in western Scotland. Argyllshire lies mainly within the Argyll and Bute council area, but northern Argyllshire extends as far as Lochs Shiel, Eil, and Leven in southern Highland council area.
In the 2nd century ad Gaelic-speaking Scots invaded Argyllshire from Ireland, then known as Scotia. The earliest Scots settlement dates to the 3rd century, when a victorious chief, Cairbre Riada, occupied lands in the area later known as Mid Argyll. These lands, called Dalriada, received new bands of immigrants from time to time from Ireland. Dalriada developed gradually as an independent kingdom under ambitious rulers and maintained a separate existence until 843, when one of them—Kenneth MacAlpin, as Kenneth I—united the Scots of Dalriada with the Picts of northeastern Scotland, founding a new hybrid kingdom that eventually became Scotland. Later Norsemen obtained control and held sway until 1266, when Argyllshire was returned to the Scottish kingdom. Prior to this, however, semi-independent chiefs of mixed Celtic and Norse ancestry acquired power in Argyllshire and the Western Isles. One of them, Somerled, really the first Lord of the Isles, was killed near Renfrew in 1164 on an expedition against the Scottish king, but his descendants held the lordship of the Isles until 1493, when King James IV deprived John, the last MacDonald Lord of the Isles, of his vast estates. The Campbells of Lochow (now Lochawe) supplanted the MacDonalds, and their chiefs became earls of Argyll.
The failure of the second Jacobite rising (1745), in which the people of Argyllshire with few exceptions fought for the Hanoverian George II and against the Stuart pretender, brought important political and economic changes. Heritable jurisdictions had made Highland lords and chiefs petty kings over their tenants and followers. The abolition of these jurisdictions in 1747 led to the development of new relationships. The rents of tenants became more important to their masters than the former friendly loyalties. Sentimental ties were broken, and landlords evicted large numbers of tenants from the small farms and holdings that had supported them on a meagre scale of subsistence to create larger farms stocked with flocks of sheep, immediately but only temporarily more profitable to their owners. Throughout the Highlands, including Argyllshire, thousands of small tenants were displaced, and large-scale emigration ensued to the Scottish Lowlands and to Canada, the United States, and Australia. Later, as sheep farming declined, the area fell into poverty. The development of tourism in the 19th and 20th centuries brought new economic life to the county.
In religious history, St. Columba and other Celtic Irish missionaries from Iona spread the Gospel throughout the kingdom of Dalriada in the 6th century. During the first Scottish Reformation (1560), the 5th earl of Argyll played a prominent part as the most influential Protestant layman in Scotland. In subsequent conflicts between episcopalianism and presbyterianism, the latter prevailed and is still the most common form of church government in Argyllshire.