According to a British diplomat serving in Angola in 1902, "nobody regarded the contract laborers as anything other than slaves." Claims of racial tolerance aside, the Portuguese set up social, political, and economic hierarchies based on race throughout their reign over Angola.  These distinctions and inequalities, as well as internal displacements of African tribes, created significant tensions between members of different ethnic and racial groups which would come to shape the formation of nationalist movements and the course of the post-colonial civil wars. 