Sultanate of Brunei

The Sultanate of Brunei was the Malay sea empire of Borneo from 1368 to 1888, centred on the stilt villages of the Brunei river. Tradition says Muhammad Shah, the first Muslim sultan, founded it in 1368; under Bolkiah, fifth sultan, it became an empire: his fleets took the whole Borneo coast, Sulu and, for a season, Manila, and his palace, Magellan's men wrote in 1521, was grander than anything in the Indies. Islam, brought by missionaries and Gujarati traders, made the sultan a shadow of God and Brunei a link in the pepper and camphor chain to China. The Portuguese seizure of Malacca in 1511 sent princes and merchants fleeing to Brunei's stronger harbour. Spain tried and failed in the Castille War of 1578. Then the slow leak: the Dutch took the spice islands, the British took Labuan in 1846, and James Brooke, the White Rajah, carved Sarawak out of Brunei's south in 1841 and never gave it back. Sultan Hashim sold and ceded and protested until almost nothing remained; in 1888, to stop the bleeding, he accepted the British protectorate, ending five centuries of independence and beginning the oil sultanate of today.