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Economy: trade An important trade item is copra. Due to the strong price fluctuations, however, this is an insecure source of income. Traditionally, there seems to have been no other export products. Imported products, at least in the nineteenth-century, were beads, tin and the metal blades for the swords, parang. We find these products used in Engganese material culture. Before the arrival of Buginese, Sumatran, and European traders, however, the Engganese did not seem to have been very oriented towards the outside world. Their boats were probably not seaworthy and trade was therefore limited to exchange between villages. | |
