# Afro-European relations in Central Africa  
A similar mix of cultural exchange and diplomatic relations characterized Afro-European relations in Central Africa, which stretched from Malembo to the south of Angola. Here, two patterns of engagement soon emerged. On the Loango coast, from Malembo to the Congo River, African rulers successfully dictated the terms of trade and social relations. While Portugal pioneered contacts with Africans, it later lost ground to Dutch, British and French merchants (Sommerdyk, 2012). As the British and French dropped out of Atlantic slavery, the Loango coast came under the influence of the merchants from Rio de Janeiro, signalling the importance of Brazil - the largest destination in the Americas for captives - to the overall management of the South Atlantic networks in the trade in human beings.  
Notably, Afro-European relations were far from being defined by trade alone. In the kingdom of Kongo, the first major Central African polity to make contact with Europeans, rulers (manikongos) used Christianity to strengthen their power soon after establishing ties to the Portuguese in the 1480s. From agricultural crops to military hardware to prestige goods, the Kongolese elite quickly incorporated elements of European culture and technology (Heywood and Thornton, 2007, pp. 199-200). Several members of the Kongolese elite became diplomats (dispatched on missions to Lisbon, Brazil, and the Vatican), military strategists and aides to missionaries seeking to spread Christianity in Central Africa (Thornton, 1984; Thornton and Mosterman, 2010; Thornton, 2013; Almeida, 2009; Brinkman, 2016). To dampen Portuguese interference in their internal affairs, Kongolese rulers sought to strengthen ties to the Vatican and other European powers. They provided the Dutch with military support to break Portugal's grip on Angola (Thornton, 2016, pp. 189-213).