Sultanate of Sambas

The Sultanate of Sambas was a Malay state on the western coast of Borneo, in what is now the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan. It began as a principality governed by local chiefs and became a kingdom in 1609, when Raden Sulaiman, a descendant of the Sepudak line, took the title of sultan under the name Muhammad Shafiuddin I. The sultanate controlled the Sambas River and its tributaries and expanded during the seventeenth century toward the Selakau and Duri rivers. It remained largely independent during the early colonial period and became a center of piracy in the early nineteenth century. British expeditions against Sambas in 1812 and 1813 failed and then captured the town, and the Dutch established control in 1819. The sultanate survived as a Dutch protectorate, joined the Republic of the United States of Indonesia in 1950, and was formally dissolved in 1956, when its territory was incorporated into Indonesia.