Sabah History

During the 15th century, Sabah was a vassal state of the Brunei Sultanate. In 1704, the Sultan of Brunei ceded the land east of Marudu Bay to the Sultan of Sulu.

In the early 1880s, Moses, an American trader obtained a lease over Sabah from Brunei. The lease was eventually passed to Alfred Dent, an Englishman who signed a treaty with Brunei and Sulu in 1881 to convert the lease into a cession. Thus British North Borneo (Sabah's old name) was born.

The state was administered by the Chartered Company of British North Borneo until the Japanese Occupation in 1945. After World War II, Sabah became a British Crown Colony. In 1963, it gained independence and joined Malaysia.