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Dál Riata[edit]
Main article: Dál Riata
Although Ptolemy's map identifies various tribes such as the Creones that might conceivably have lived in the Inner Hebrides in the Roman era,
the first written records of life begin in the 6th century CE when the founding of the kingdom of Dál Riata is recorded. This encompassed roughly what is now Argyll and Bute and Lochaber in Scotland and County Antrim in Ireland.
The eighth century St Martin's Cross on Iona
In Argyll it consisted initially of three main kindreds: Cenél Loairn in north and mid-Argyll, Cenél nÓengusa based on Islay and Cenél nGabráin based in Kintyre. By the end of the 7th century a fourth kindred, Cenél Comgaill had emerged, based in eastern Argyll.
The figure of Columba looms large in any history of Dál Riata and his founding of a monastery on Iona ensured that Dál Riata would be of great importance in the spread of Christianity in northern Britain. However, Iona was far from unique. Lismore in the territory of the Cenél Loairn, was sufficiently important for the death of its abbots to be recorded with some frequency and many smaller sites, such as on Eigg, Hinba and Tiree, are known from the annals. The kingdom's independent existence ended in the Viking Age, and it eventually merged with the lands of the Picts to form the Kingdom of Alba.
North of Dál Riata the Inner Hebrides were nominally under Pictish control although the historical record is sparse.
Norse rule[edit]
Main article: Kingdom of Mann and the Isles
Folio 32v of the Book of Kells which may have been produced by the monks of Iona and taken to Ireland for safekeeping after repeated Viking raids of the Hebrides.
According to Ó Corráin (1998) "when and how the Vikings conquered and occupied the Isles is unknown, perhaps unknowable" although from 793 onwards repeated raids by Vikings on the British Isles are recorded. "All the islands of Britain" were devastated in 794 with Iona being sacked in 802 and 806. In 870 Dumbarton was besieged by Amlaíb Conung and Ímar, "the two kings of the Northmen". It is therefore likely that Scandinavian hegemony was already significant on the western coasts of Scotland by then. In the 9th century the first references to the Gallgáedil (i.e. "foreign Gaels") appear. This term was variously used in succeeding centuries to refer to individuals of mixed Scandinavian-Celtic descent and/or culture who became dominant in south-west Scotland, parts of Northern England and the isles.
The early 10th century are an obscure period so far as the Hebrides are concerned but Aulaf mac Sitric, who fought at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937 is recorded as a King of the Isles from c. 941 to 980.
It is difficult to reconcile the records of the Irish annals with Norse sources such as the Orkneyinga Saga but it is likely that Norwegian and Gallgáedil Uí Ímair warlords fought for control for much of period from the 9th to the 12th centuries. In 990 Sigurd the Stout, Earl of Orkney took command of the Hebrides, a position he retained for most of the period until he was killed at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. There is then a period of uncertainty but it is possible that Sigurd's son Thorfinn the Mighty became ruler circa 1035 until his own death some two decades later.
By the late 12th century Irish influence became a significant feature of island life and Diarmait mac Maíl na mBó, the High King of Ireland took possession of Mann and the Isles until 1072. The records for the rulers of the Hebrides are obscured again until the arrival of Godred Crovan as King of Dublin and the Isles. The ancestor of many of the succeeding rulers of Mann and the Isles, he was eventually ousted by Muirchertach Ua Briain and fled to Islay, where he died in the plague of 1095. It is not clear the extent to which Ui Briain dominance was now asserted in the islands north of Man, but growing Irish influence in these seas brought a rapid and decisive response from Norway.
19th-century depiction of Magnus Barelegs's forces in Ireland, before his death in 1103.
Magnus Barelegs had re-established direct Norwegian overlordship by 1098.
A second expedition in 1102 saw incursions into Ireland but in August 1103 he was killed fighting in Ulster. The next king of the isles was Lagmann Godredsson and there followed a succession of Godred Crovan's descendants who, (as vassals of the kings of Norway) ruled the Hebrides north of Ardnamurchan for the next 160 years. However, their control of the southern Inner Hebrides was lost with the emergence of Somerled, the self-styled Lord of Argyle.
For a while Somerled took control of Mann and the Hebrides in toto, but he met his death in 1164 during an invasion of the mainland. At this point Godred the Black, grandson of Godred Crovan re-took possession of the northern Hebrides and the southern isles were distributed amongst Somerled's sons, his descendants eventually becoming known as the Lords of the Isles, and giving rise to Clan MacDougall, Clan Donald and Clan Macruari. However, both during and after Somerled's life the Scottish monarchs sought to take a control of the islands he and his descendants held. This strategy eventually led to an invasion by Haakon Haakonarson, King of Norway. After the stalemate of the Battle of Largs, Haakon retreated to Orkney, where he died in 1263. Following this expedition, the Hebrides and Mann and all rights that the Norwegian crown "had of old therein" were yielded to the Kingdom of Scotland as a result of the 1266 Treaty of Perth.
Clans and Scottish rule[edit]
The Lords of the Isles, a phrase first recorded in 1336, but which title may have been used earlier, would continue to rule the Inner Hebrides as well as part of the Western Highlands as subjects of the King of Scots until John MacDonald, fourth Lord of the Isles, squandered the family's powerful position. Through a secret treaty with Edward IV of England, negotiated at Ardtornish Castle and signed in 1462, he made himself a servant of the English crown. When James III of Scotland found out about the treaty in 1476, he issued a sentence of forfeiture for MacDonald's lands. Some were restored for a promise of good behaviour, but MacDonald was unable to control his son Aonghas Óg, who defeated him at the Battle of Bloody Bay, fought off the coast of Mull near Tobermory in 1481. A further rebellion by his nephew, Alexander of Lochalsh, provoked an exasperated James IV to forfeit the lands for the last time in 1493.
Portrait of Flora MacDonald by Alan Ramsay
The most powerful clans on Skye in the post-Norse period were Clan MacLeod, originally based in Trotternish, and Clan MacDonald of Sleat. Following the disintegration of the Lordship of the Isles, the Mackinnons also emerged as an independent clan, whose substantial landholdings in Skye were centred on Strathaird. The MacDonalds of South Uist were bitter rivals of the MacLeods, and an attempt by the former to murder church-goers at Trumpan in retaliation for a previous massacre on Eigg, resulted in the Battle of the Spoiling Dyke of 1578.
After the failure of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, Flora MacDonald became famous for rescuing Prince Charles Edward Stuart from the Hanoverian troops. Her story is strongly associated with their escape via Skye and she is buried at Kilmuir. She was visited by Samuel Johnson and James Boswell during their 1773 Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and written on her gravestone are Johnson's words that hers was "A name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour". In the wake of the rebellion the clan system was broken up and islands of the Hebrides became a series of landed estates.
British era[edit]
Telford's Clachan Bridge between the mainland and Seil, also known as the "Bridge across the Atlantic", was built in 1792.
With the implementation of the Treaty of Union in 1707 the Hebrides became part of the new Kingdom of Great Britain, but the clans' loyalties to a distant monarch were not strong. A considerable number of islesmen "came out" in support of the Jacobite Earl of Mar in the "15" and again in the 1745 rising including Macleod of Dunvegan and MacLea of Lismore. The aftermath of the decisive Battle of Culloden, which effectively ended Jacobite hopes of a Stuart restoration, was widely felt. The British government's strategy was to estrange the clan chiefs from their kinsmen and turn their descendants into English-speaking landlords whose main concern was the revenues their estates brought rather than the welfare of those who lived on them. This may have brought peace to the islands, but in the following century it came at a terrible price.
The early 19th century was a time of improvement and population growth. Roads and quays were built, the slate industry became a significant employer on Easdale and surrounding islands, and the construction of the Crinan and Caledonian canals and other engineering works such as Telford's "Bridge across the Atlantic" improved transport and access. However, in the mid-19th century, the inhabitants of many parts of the Hebrides were devastated by the clearances, which destroyed communities throughout the Highlands and Islands as the human populations were evicted and replaced with sheep farms. The position was exacerbated by the failure of the islands' kelp industry that thrived from the 18th century until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and large scale emigration became endemic. The "Battle of the Braes" involved a demonstration against lack of access to land and the serving of eviction notices. This event was instrumental in the creation of the Napier Commission, which reported in 1884 on the situation in the Highlands. Disturbances continued until the passing of the 1886 Crofters' Act and on one occasion 400 marines were deployed on Skye to maintain order.
Sea filled slate quarries on Seil (foreground) and Easdale in the Slate Islands
For those who remained new economic opportunities emerged through the export of cattle, commercial fishing and tourism. Nonetheless, emigration and military service became the choice of many and the archipelago's populations continued to dwindle throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. Jura's population fell from 1300 in 1831 to less than 250 by 1961 and Mull's from 10,600 in 1821 to less than 3,000 in 1931. Lengthy periods of continuous occupation notwithstanding, some of the smaller islands were abandoned – the Treshnish Isles in 1934, Handa in 1948, and Eilean Macaskin in the 1880s among them.
Nonetheless, there were continuing gradual economic improvements, among the most visible of which was the replacement of the traditional thatched blackhouse with accommodation of a more modern design and in recent years, with the assistance of Highlands and Islands Enterprise many of the island's populations have begun to increase after decades of decline.
