South of the Congo River, Afro-European relations were distinctive in nature because of Portuguese success in establishing a coastal enclave around the cities of Luanda and Benguela as well as the region's deep ties with Brazil, Portugal's colony in South America. Luanda displayed noticeable commonalities with coastal hubs on the Gold Coast. While both were undeniably under the control of Europeans, their social and economic fabrics were heavily dependent on slavery. In both places, a cosmopolitan coastal elite dominated the operation of the slave trade. As on the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast, members of Angola's coastal elite travelled across the Atlantic and dispatched their offspring abroad for education and professional training (Candido, 2011; Candido, 2013).  
In many ways, however, Luanda and Benguela made for truly unique environments. First, by hosting a permanent civilian, religious, judicial and military apparatus, they were urban settings unlike anything ever created in continental Africa. They served as springboards for networks of trade and influence well beyond the African coast, allowing the Luanda administration to project power into the city's hinterland. Far from uniformly European, they gave rise to deeply amalgamated social and cultural landscapes. Second, while  
both cities were taken over by the Dutch in the 1640s, Portuguese sovereignty was otherwise uncontested (Boxer, 1952). In contrast to the Slave Coast, coastal elites did not necessarily represent the power of African kingdoms, nor did they always advance Portugal's commercial and political interests. In fact, they often pursued their trade interests at the expense of Portuguese strategic goals, building close transatlantic connections to Brazil, Portugal's colony in South America.