This economic power soon became political, and by the nineteenth century the Afro-Portuguese dominated the areas of the central highlands closer to the coast, presiding over several semi-autonomous kingdoms (reinos) centered on the coastal ports of Luanda and Benguela. These reinos were under the technical sovereignty of the Portuguese crown but were in practice ruled by the leading mestiço families. Seeing themselves as ethnically distinct from the indigenous Africans, the Afro-Portuguese were nonetheless visually indistinguishable from black Africans and often spoke Kimbundu as well as Portuguese. Still, the Afro-Portuguese “seldom, if ever, identified with the Africans because for all practical purposes they were Portuguese in nearly every way except colour.” 

Later in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, some of the old Afro-Portuguese families began to merge with the other Kimbundu-speaking peoples of coastal and central Angola to form the modern Mbundu ethnic identity. The history of Afro-Portuguese dominance and compliance with the Portuguese colonial authorities created rifts between the coastal and inland peoples, which would continue to manifest themselves in the post-colonial conflicts, as the coastal and Mbundu-dominated MPLA struggled to win support among the Ovimbundu people of the interior.

The relative dominance of the Afro-Portuguese began to be challenged in the late 1800s, as the Portuguese were increasingly pressured to “modernize” their colonies by their colonial neighbors, the British and Germans. To do this, the old system of indirect rule through mestiço and African allies had to be replaced by direct Portuguese control and white settlement. Though European settlement continued at a relatively slow pace through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, restrictions were gradually made on which civil service and military positions Africans or mestiços could occupy. As the Afro-Portuguese were increasingly excluded from the higher levels of colonial administration, they had to compete with poor white immigrants for lower level jobs. Modern forms of transportation like the railroad and steamships began to dominate trade at the expense of the old mestiço-controlled caravans, further undermining their economic activities. The Afro-Portuguese were also challenged by a growing population of urbanized and mostly missionary-educated Africans.

In an attempt to create a more defined social hierarchy, the Portuguese implemented as system of assimilation, drawing a distinction between indígena (indigenous) and assimilado (assimilated) populations. Members of the indígena group were given access to few political rights and restricted to only the lowest and most menial forms of employment. By contrast, assimilados, mainly urbanized, were granted some political rights and eventually Portuguese citizenship. Becoming an assmilado meant showing a certain degree of educational attainment and financial security, in addition to adopting the Portuguese language and culture. The criteria for entry into the assimilado class were regulated by the Portuguese colonial authorities.  

Assimilados were further divided into two groups, “assimilated objects” and “assimilated groups,” with the former mostly made up of the established Afro-Portuguese families who worked in various levels of the colonial government and the latter of the growing class of missionary-educated Africans.
