Banggi Island
Banggi Island or Banguey Island is located in the Kudat Division of Kudat District, Sabah in Malaysia. With an area of separated from the Sabah mainland by the South Banggi Channel, it is the largest island fully in the country followed by Bruit Island of Sarawak, Langkawi Island of Kedah, and Penang Island of Penang. Located off the northern coast of Sabah near Marudu Bay, the highest elevation on the island is the Senambung Hill at. As of 2016, the island has an estimated population of 30,000. Limbuak is one of the main settlements on the northern islands, with other settlements including neighbouring island of Balambangan, Dagotan, Kapitangan, Karakit, Laksian, Lok Agong, Loktohog, Malawali, Maliu, Palak, Sabor, Sebogoh, and Tigabu. The nearest neighbouring Philippine island is Mangsee Islands.
Etymology
The origin of the island name of Banggi is borrowed from the local dialect of Bonggi Dusun, which carries the meaning of bangkai. In the past, visitors on the island would usually find human corpses strung up on trees since the practice of immediately burying the dead was non-existent among the earliest island inhabitants. Based on local folklore, the earliest island inhabitants would usually leave their dead relatives on trees to parch them to the bones, which were then collected for burial. In the modern days, the inhabitants are more used to calling the island "Bonggi". The word "Banggi" is also used among the islander as a curse word as in the phrase of "Banggi nu!" which are translated as drop dead in the English language. During the British administration, the island was referred to as "Banguey".History
A Vietnamese Đông Sơn drum was once uncovered in Timbang Dayang Hill on the island that was between 2,000 and 2,500 years old, together with the findings of ancient Chinese ceramics around the island and in Kudat, indicating the island's interaction with various Chinese and Vietnamese dynasties. The island was once under the rule of the Sultanate of Brunei, as were much of the areas of northern Borneo before the arrival of European powers. The Bruneian Sultanate used to exact tribute from the coastal people, whilst the interior was free from any thalassocratic control. Around 1704, Brunei ceded the northern part of Borneo from Kimanis northward, including the islands of Palawan, Banggi, and Balambangan, to the Sultanate of Sulu as a reward for their help during the Brunei Civil War.British acquisition
In 1759, Alexander Dalrymple, a Scottish geographer, hydrographer, and publisher, was dispatched by the East India Company to establish trade relations with the Sulu Sultanate, where he signed a treaty of alliance and commerce with Sultan Bantilan of Sulu in early January 1761.The following year on 12 September 1762, Sultan Bantilan held the council of the chief people at Sulu, in which the island of Balambangan was granted to the EIC. Within the same year, Dalrymple established a factory at Banggi to process spice obtained from the Bugis working in the Moluccas, although the plan never materialised. Following the British occupation of Manila, Sultan Alimuddin of Sulu, who had been imprisoned in Manila by the Spanish authorities, was freed by the British and allowed to return to his throne, which was welcomed by the Sulu people. The first direct contact between the indigenous islanders of Bonggi Dusun and the English was made on 23 January 1763 when he took the island for the EIC and hoisted the British flag. He returned to Sulu in 1764 to renegotiate the agreement, and a new cession was made by the Sulu Sultanate on 2 July 1764, which gave the EIC exclusive rights on the islands of Balambangan and Banggi. By 1773, the British began establishing a settlement with John Herbert as Chief Resident, accompanied by Captain Thomas Forrest, while Dalrymple was dismissed by the EIC due to some disagreements with the company authority. Herbert, however, cheated the EIC out of large sums of money and quarrelled with local Sulu chiefs, causing the Sulus to regret their deals with the EIC and causing the British garrison to be attacked by the Sulus, with the Balambangan settlement being destroyed by Sulu pirates in March 1775. Due to his conduct, Herbert was dismissed by the EIC later that same year. Most of the British survivors fled to Brunei, and by 6 July 1775, the British returned to Banggi to reclaim the remains left behind by the Sulus.
File:Admiralty Chart No 948 Balabac Strait, Published 1870.jpg|thumb|right|A British Admiralty Chart in 1870, featuring the island of Banggi's location in the Balabac Strait
In 1803, the EIC dispatched Robert Farquhar to resettle the Balambangan Island although the British withdrew in 1805 due to the inability to defend their post. Further in 1823 and in the 1840s, the British considered resettling both Banggi and Balambangan although the British later establish the Crown Colony of Labuan instead in 1848. In 1865, the Sultan of Borneo leased the island to Charles Lee Moses, the American Consul General of Brunei, and subsequently to the American Trading Company of Borneo, which was later acquired by a German businessman, adventurer, and diplomat, Gustav von Overbeck, and Alfred Dent of the North Borneo Chartered Company. In 1877, Sultan Abdul Momin of Brunei granted the territories from the Sulaman River to the Paitan River on the northeast coast to Overbeck and Dent, including the island of Banggi and all other islands within three marine leagues of the coast, as well as from the Paitan to the Sibuco River. Following the American Navy's consideration to build a naval depot in Banggi as well as the Kingdom of Italy's attempt to acquire the island from the Sultanate of Brunei in 1870 to establish a penal settlement, the British established the protectorate of North Borneo through the NBCC in 1881. The Germans also began to get involved in commercial activities on the island with the establishment of a tobacco estate at Limbuak Darat in 1884. By 1885, the British surveyed the proposed town of Mitford, which is the English name of Karakit or Kerahid by the Bonggi Dusun.
Since the establishment of North Borneo, the British administered Banggi Island directly from Kudat District with the only administration building on the island having been a police quarters at Mitford established in 1887. In 1903, the Sultanate of Sulu made further confirmation of their cession of all islands near to the territory of North Borneo, from Banggi to as far as the Sibuco Bay. The British began establishing schools in the 1950s to address islander literacy, with further administration infrastructure being established throughout the foundation of the Malaysian federation in 1963.