Competition over the slave trade has repercussions…

Competition over the slave trade has repercussions far beyond the boundaries of Kongo society.

Slave-trading activities create powerful vested interests among both Africans and foreigners—the Portuguese and later the Dutch, French, British, and Arabs.

A new source of instability has thus  been introduced into the coastal areas of Central Africa and its hinterland, which greatly hastens the decline of the kingdoms.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the history of the Kongo Kingdom, which is a centralized state system ruled by an absolute monarch.