Brunei

From a maritime empire that once ruled all of Borneo to an oil-rich sultanate, the abode of peace under the world's longest-reigning monarch.

Brunei's history runs from an early Borneo trading port that paid tribute to China in the 6th century to one of the wealthiest small states on Earth. Out of that trade rose the Bruneian Sultanate, which embraced Islam in the 14th century and reached a golden age under Sultan Bolkiah around 1500, when its writ extended over the whole island of Borneo, the Sulu Archipelago, and parts of the Philippines. Centuries of decline followed as the sultanate ceded Sarawak to the English adventurer James Brooke, lost Sabah and Labuan, and in 1888 became a British protectorate, transformed only by the discovery of oil at Seria in 1929. After the Japanese occupation, a 1959 constitution, and the suppressed revolt of 1962, Brunei resumed full independence on 1 January 1984 as an absolute monarchy under the Malay Islamic Monarchy ideology and the long reign of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.