[ Sabah Early History ]

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The island of Borneo, the third largest in the world after Greenland and Papa New Guinea, has been discovered by Chinese Explorers even before the first Century AD but no attempts have been made to conquer it. There was, however, a powerful Brunei Sultanate which ruled over most of Borneo.
       

In 1521, Magellan's fleet visited Brunei thus establishing the first recorded contact between Westerners and the people of Borneo. Between 1521 and 1764, changes in the Sultanate of Brunei eventually let to the handover of North Borneo (first English name for Sabah) to the British East India Company in 1764.  

In 1881, the Dent brothers of London signed all rights to a company which was granted a royal charter. Kudat became the first capital of British North Borneo. The British North Borneo Chartered Company was officially formed in 1882 and Sandakan became the first capital of British North Borneo.   



Jesselton (now Sabah's capital Kota Kinabalu) was founded in conjunction with the constreuction of the Trans Borneo railroad, and developed into a flourishing trading post until the Japanese occupied the whole of Borneo during the Second World War. Jesselton and Sandakan were, like many towns, destroyed in Allied air raids targeted at the Japanese. After the Second World War the British Chartered Company was not able to rebuild the war devastated country and ceded it to the British Crown, and Sabah became a colony.

In 1963, North Borneo became independent and reverted to its pre-colonial name, Sabah, on becoming the 13th state of the Federation of Malaysia. In 1967, Jesselton, originally named after a director of the North Borneo Company, was renamed Kota Kinabalu.



The beginning of Sabah's existence as an administrative entity was certainly dominated by personalities who were at once daring and adventurous as well as gamblers at heart. Men like Gustavus Baron Overbeck and his partner Alfred Dent, who put up