Brunei

Brunei, officially Brunei Darussalam, is a country in Southeast Asia on the northern coast of Borneo, entirely surrounded apart from its South China Sea coastline by the Malaysian state of Sarawak, with a 2025 population of 466,330, the least populated country in Asia, and Bandar Seri Begawan as its capital, home to roughly 64,000 residents. Malay is the official language and Sunni Islam the state religion; the government is an absolute monarchy ruled by the Sultan under a fusion of English common law and sharia-inspired jurisprudence. At its peak under Sultan Bolkiah from 1485 to 1528, the Sultanate of Brunei controlled most of Borneo along with the Sulu archipelago, but its empire declined through the nineteenth century, ceding Kuching to James Brooke and Sabah to the British North Borneo Chartered Company before becoming a British protectorate in 1888; a 1962 armed rebellion against the monarchy was suppressed with British assistance, and Britain's protectorate ended on 1 January 1984 when Brunei became fully sovereign. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has led Brunei since 1967, presiding over a consultative Legislative Council whose members he appoints; the country's wealth derives from extensive petroleum and natural gas fields, its GDP grew 56 percent between 1999 and 2008, and it ranks very high on the Human Development Index, seventh in the world by GDP per capita at purchasing power parity according to the IMF.