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. 