 As before independence, the sedentary lifestyle of these groups made them more receptive to and useful in state formation, and they quickly came to dominate state administration, even if the Moorish groups built up by the French remained in charge of the political process.Moors reacted to this change by increasing pressures for Arabization, to Arabicize many aspects of Mauritanian life, such as law and language, and ethnic tension built up – helped by a common memory of warfare and slave raids.President Moktar Ould Daddah, originally helped to the post by the French, rapidly reformed Mauritania into an authoritarian one-party state in 1964, with his new constitution.