Ross and Cromarty , historical region, Northern Scotland , spans the width of the country from the North Sea east to Atlantic to the west. It includes Lewis (part of the island Lewis and Harris ) on the Outer Hebrides .
Britannica Quiz Discover the England, Scotland and Wales quiz What is the highest mountain in Wales? What are the largest and most northerly Scottish islands in the Outer Hebrides? Test your knowledge of UK geography by taking this quiz. Ross and Cromarty include the historic counties of Ross-Shire and Cromartyshire. Ross-Shire is the larger of the two counties, including all of Lewis and most of Ross and Cromarty on mainland Scotland. Ross itself includes the traditional regions of Wester Ross on the Atlantic coast and Easter Ross on the North Sea coast. Cromartyshire consists of several enclaves scattered across Ross-shire, including an area around the town Cromarty and a larger area to the northwest bordering Sutherland including the town of Ullapool. Rossshire and Cromartyshire were merged into Ross and Cromarty County in 1889. Lewis was administratively separated from Ross and Cromarty in 1975, and Ross and Cromarty ceased to be a local government entity in 1996 when the Highland Council assumed all local government responsibilities in the region. The mainland portions of Ross and Cromarty and some small islands close to the mainland are wholly within Highland Council territory, while Lewis is part of the Council Area the Western Isles is.
Stone circles and cairns are evidence of the area's prehistoric occupation. With the first centuries Display was the region home to the picts , which in the 6th and 7th centuries were used by the followers of St. Columba converted to Christianity. Over the next three centuries, the region fell under the rule of Norse overlords. In the 12th century, Easter Ross became king of David I. of Scotland, who wanted to break the power of the local Gaelic chiefs, colonized with Flemish, English-speaking Dutch and Anglo-Norman . This is when County Ross came into being. The Gaelic Lords of the Isles ruled the Atlantic coast from the 12th to the 15th centuries, when the kings of Scotland gained control of the entire region.
In the 16th century, Ross and Cromarty were occupied by various clans, principally the Rosses, Munroes, Macleods, Macdonalds and Mackenzies . Apart from occasional conflicts between these feudal clans, the only battles were that of Invercarron (1650), when Colonel Archibald Strachan's parliamentary troops crushed the royalist forces of James Graham Montrose, and Glenshiel (1719), when General Joseph Wightman added a small Jacobite Uprising defeated led by the Earl of Seaforth. The circle of Ross-shire has been formed 1661 and Cromarty became a county in 1698. During the 18th century, the government reduced the power of clan chiefs and paved the way for the acquisition of much of the land by outsiders, who forcibly evicted thousands of crofters (crofter-subsistence farmers) in the "Upland Clearances" of the early 19th century. Century to create large sheep farms. There was a large-scale emigration to the Lowlands of Scotland 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 difficulties meant crofters and other country dwellers were still living well into the 20th century in urban areas migrated. During the late 20th century the development of the Tourism and the exploitation of North Sea oil brought new economic vitality to the region.