When it was founded in 1819, Singapore represented the farthest reach of British imperial authority, and in 1824, the British and Dutch conspired to create a unique kind of border, lacing its way through maritime space, and allotting cartographic spheres to both parties. The major political effect of this division was the dismemberment of the Johor maritime empire. Its core, the Riau-Lingga Archipelago, became a laxly administered buffer zone for Dutch Batavia, while its dual-sovereign head—the sultan and the temenggong—landed, impoverished, on the British side in Singapore. Thus, this maritime empire gave way to a vacuous frontier-zone between two European rivals, each incapable of exercising the authority they claimed. This was the new site of ‘piracy’, as it had been for Hugo Grotius two centuries before; however, this time it was indigenous seafarers—not rival Europeans—who stood accused of rejecting the freedom of the seas.