Sultan Abu al-Mafakhir Mahmud Abdulkadir or better known as Pangeran Ratu (died 1651) was the ruler of

Banten Banten ( id, Banten; Sundanese: , romanized ''Banten'') is the westernmost province on the island of Java, Indonesia. Its capital city is Serang. The province borders West Java and the Special Capital Region of Jakarta on the east, the Ja ...

in Northwest

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

, and was the first ruler anywhere on the island of Java to take the title of

sultan Sultan (; ar, سلطان ', ) is a position with several historical meanings. Originally, it was an Arabic abstract noun meaning "strength", "authority", "rulership", derived from the verbal noun ', meaning "authority" or "power". Later, it c ...

, which he took in 1638, under the Arabic name Abu al-Mafakhir Mahmud Abdulkadir. This set a precedent for Sultan Agung of Mataram soon afterwards to take the title himself. Pangeran Ratu reigned during a prosperous trading time, from which his empire gained considerable wealth; however it was also a period of increasing European influence in Western Java. In 1603, the first permanent trading post of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

(VOC) was established in

, and in 1602 the English were also given a trading post there. Jayakarta (modern

Jakarta Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital city, capital and list of Indonesian cities by population, largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coa ...

) was then a vassal of Banten, which both the English and Dutch sought for its natural harbor. Bantenese forces held the territory from both, until the VOC under Jan Pieterszoon Coen burned down the town and drove the Bantenese out, and renamed it Batavia. From 1633 to 1639, another war was fought with the Dutch, which ended with a vague ceasefire commitment. A treaty in 1645 clarified the situation, which held until the reign of Pangeran Ratu's successor,

Ageng Tirtayasa (1631–1695), complete stylized name Sultan Ageng Tirtayasa, also known as Ageng and Abulfatah Agung, was the sixth sultan of Banten (on Java in modern Indonesia) and reigned during the kingdom's golden age. Overview Ageng built a str ...

.Ricklefs, 78

Notes

References

* M.C. Ricklefs. ''A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1300'', 2nd ed. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. {{DEFAULTSORT:Ratu, Pangeran 1651 deaths Year of birth missing Sultans of Banten