Sultanate of Banjar

The Sultanate of Banjar was the Islamic state of the Banjar people in southeastern Borneo, lasting from 1520 to 1860. It was born from civil war: Prince Raden Samudera, losing the struggle for the old Hindu kingdom, called on the Javanese Sultanate of Demak for help, embraced Islam in 1526 and crowned himself Sultan Suriansyah with his capital at Kuin. His successors moved the court to Kayu Tangi and Martapura and turned the realm into the pepper warehouse of the archipelago. Under Mustain Billah the state reached its height, its ships carrying pepper to Java, China and Europe while Dutch and English merchants competed for its favour. The Dutch East India Company nibbled away at its ports for two centuries, and when the sultan resisted further demands in the 1850s, the colonial army invaded. The Dutch abolished the sultanate in 1860, though princes of the blood kept guerrilla resistance alive in the interior until 1905. A sultanate without power was ceremonially restored in 2010, but the state itself belongs to the age of sail and spice.