Banten Sultanate

The Banten Sultanate was the Islamic pepper kingdom of northwest Java, founded in the sixteenth century by Sunan Gunungjati, who had already founded Cirebon, and ruling from Serang over the Sunda Strait. Before 1526 its site held Banten Girang, a Hindu Sundanese town under the Sunda kings; the saints and traders made it Muslim, and pepper made it rich. Hasanuddin built a new capital to mark the era, drew Lampung pepper to his ports, and left the work to Maulana Yusuf. At its late sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century height Bantam, as the English called it, rivaled any port of Southeast Asia, sailing for the Coromandel coast, while the English and then the Danes opened offices and sold the muskets that drilled Banten's troops behind a harbour blockade. Then Batavia overshadowed it: in 1650 Mataram demanded submission and lost the Pagarage war, but Dutch factory turned to fortress, and in 1813 the kingdom was annexed to the Dutch East Indies, its core surviving as today's Banten province.