There was a parallel between the domination of the VOC on the sea and the burgeoning piracy on the archipelago’s waters (Lapian, 1987). 32 Of course, piracy occurred along the busy trade routes. Pirate’s targets were not only foreign ships but also indigenous traders. Sometimes they robbed coastal villages, capturing villagers and selling them as slaves (Reid, 1983). 33 Nevertheless, indigenous traders still existed and continued continued to carry out interregional shipping and trade as they did before the presence of the Westerners. In fact, there was a new trend in which prahu shipping functioned solely as a supplementary service of the Dutch shipping. They acted as distributors of imported goods from large to small ports, and conversely they transported exported products from small to large ports so that they may be shipped to foreign countries.