Their notable capacity to explore the geographical conditions, local kinship and
clientship networks, entrepreneurial opportunities and the weakness of the Portuguese presence in the region, underlines the fact that their brokerage roles are fundamental to an understanding of the region's checkered history.
It also seems that at this time it becomes easier for aristocratic families to gain enormous power and wealth through the system of
clientship. In this way, local leaders or chiefs could gain wider and more "kingly" power.
These relationships included various ties of patronage and
clientship among the foreign and local traders.
Greater power and higher status accrued to Fulani clan leaders who consolidated their control through intermarriage and
clientship; office holding became associated with religious knowledge, ties to the Jihad, and kinship (Hendrixson 1981).
The state remains central in perpetuating
clientship, wealth and development.
In the Third World the satellite or `client' states of both superpowers followed their leaders, while states which had no particular relation or
clientship with either party were divided, and most of Latin America took part in the Games.