STRATHCLYDE

in British history, native Briton kingdom that, from about the 6th century, had extended over the basin of the River Clyde and adjacent western coastal districts, the former county of Ayr. Its capital was Dumbarton, fortress of the Britons, then known as Alclut. The name Strathclyde was not used until the 9th or 10th century. Converted to Christianity in the early 6th century, the men of Strathclyde, in alliance with the Cumbrians, later in the century waged war against the still-pagan Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia (later part of the larger kingdom of Northumbria). In the 7th century, however, the Northumbrians established supremacy over the whole of Cumbria, but Strathclyde was not finally defeated until 756. Vikings overran and destroyed Dumbarton in 870, and, in the first half of the 10th century, Strathclyde became subject to the Anglo-Saxon kings of England, one of whom, Edmund I, in 945 leased it to Malcolm I, king of Scots. Thereafter, Strathclyde's destiny lay with the Scots. It became a province of Scotland after the death of its king Owain the Bald, who in 1016 (or possibly 1018) helped Malcolm II defeat the English at Carham. region of western Scotland, created by the administrative reorganization of 1975. It is divided into the districts of Argyll and Bute, Dumbarton, City of Glasgow, Clydebank, Bearsden and Milngavie, Strathkelvin, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth, Monklands, Motherwell, Hamilton, East Kilbride, Eastwood, Clydesdale, Renfrew, Inverclyde, Cunninghame, Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Kyle and Carrick, and Cumnock and Doon Valley. Strathclyde, the name of the ancient British kingdom that extended in pre-Anglian times far south into what is now northwestern England, was adopted to designate the new 1975 administrative region, which is dominated by the city region of Glasgow. Area 5,318 square miles (13,773 square km). Pop. (1990 est.) 2,306,000.