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Sugar society at a glance
- Where: mainly in the Northeast (Pernambuco and the Recôncavo of Bahia) and, on a smaller scale, in São Vicente.
- When: the classic form of the engenho (sugar mill and plantation), with large plantations and slave labor, dominated the 16th and 17th centuries.
- At the top: the mill owner and his family, who ruled over relatives, dependents and enslaved people.
- In the middle: cane farmers, sugar masters, purgers, clerks, artisans and other free workers.
- At the bottom: enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, who did almost all the work.
- Culture: the mill gave rise to racial mixing, much of Afro-Brazilian culture and religious syncretism.
The sugar society in colonial Brazil was born around the sugar mill. The first mills were set up by the Portuguese, mainly in the Northeast and in the São Vicente region, and they soon became a profitable industry, since sugar was in high demand in Europe.
In this article, you will see how the mill worked as the center of the colony’s economy and social life, who lived there, what people ate, what the mill owner’s family was like and, finally, how the Catholic religion blended with African and Indigenous beliefs.
The sources of this article
To do this, we draw mainly on the book Casa-grande & Senzala (1933; published in English as The Masters and the Slaves), by the Pernambuco-born sociologist Gilberto Freyre. This work is a landmark of Brazil’s cultural historiography, because Freyre analyzed the country’s formation through the relationships between the Portuguese, Africans and Indigenous peoples. In addition, we also rely on Eduardo Bueno and on Mary Del Priore and Renato Venâncio.
If you want to learn about the physical layout of the mill and how sugar was made, step by step, also read our guide on the sugar mill in colonial Brazil.
Note: quotations from Portuguese-language sources have been freely translated.
The sugar mill and the colonial economy
After the General Government was established in 1549, colonization intensified and, as a result, many sugar mills were set up in Brazil.
O CICLO DO AÇÚCAR - Sociedade e Economia Colonial
However, Martim Afonso de Sousa had already founded mills before that, starting in 1532, and the first of them was built in the São Vicente region, in today’s state of São Paulo. In fact, one of the oldest was the Engenho São Jorge dos Erasmos, whose ruins still stand in Santos.
Sugarcane before Martim Afonso
According to Mary Del Priore and Renato Venâncio (2006), sugarcane had been part of the colonial economy since the very beginning of colonization. Indeed, there are signs that it reached Brazil in the very first years, between 1502 and 1503.
Systematic cultivation of cane, however, took another decade. In 1516, for example, the powerful Casa da Índia (India House), the royal body in charge of customs, was looking for sugar masters to work in mills near the trading posts on the coast. Moreover, by 1518, enslaved people from Guinea and settlers from the island of Madeira were already at work.
Later, in the 1520s, the Lisbon Customs House began to levy duties on sugar coming from the Terra de Santa Cruz (Land of the Holy Cross), as the colony was then called. After all, when they arrived in 1500, the Portuguese had named the land Ilha de Vera Cruz (Island of the True Cross) and, shortly afterwards, Terra de Santa Cruz.
Even so, although cane had been planted from the start, it only became an economically viable product from the 1530s onward, thanks to the initiatives of Martim Afonso de Sousa.
The Portuguese, the Flemish and the Dutch
It is important to remember that, from the earliest days of colonization, Portugal had a partnership with Flemish and, later, Dutch merchants for the production and sale of sugar. While the Portuguese produced it, these merchants shipped, refined and distributed the product throughout Europe.
This partnership, however, was damaged by the Iberian Union, from 1580 onward, when Portugal and Spain came to be ruled by the same king, Philip II. Since the Spanish were at war with the Dutch, the latter were barred from trading with Brazil. Consequently, this factor helped to motivate the Dutch invasion of northeastern Brazil.
The expansion of the mills under the donataries
As colonization intensified, the Portuguese and their Flemish and Dutch partners began to invest large sums in founding mills and, next, in planting vast areas of sugarcane. According to Eduardo Bueno (2003, p. 44-45):
Barred by law from exploiting brazilwood (a crown monopoly), the donataries – led by Duarte Coelho – brought settlers from the island of Madeira with them, began clearing the coastal forests and set up their first mills.
Population growth in Europe, the relative fall in the product’s price, the fertility of the northeastern massapé (a rich, dark clay soil) – everything helped make sugar a product increasingly consumed in the cities and sought after on the market.
Furthermore, for Gilberto Freyre, the Portuguese were innovative colonizers by the standards of the time:
Even if it was wealth – the kind they created under the pressure of American circumstances – built at the expense of slave labor: therefore tainted by that perversion of economic instinct which early on turned the Portuguese away from producing values toward exploiting, transporting or acquiring them (FREYRE, 2003, p. 79).
A patriarchal and aristocratic society
Freyre also highlighted the aristocratic character of this society:
Oliveira Martins observes that the colonial population in Brazil, “especially in the north, was formed aristocratically, that is, the houses of Portugal sent branches overseas; from the very beginning the colony presented an appearance different from the turbulent immigrations of the Castilians in Central and Western America”.
And before him Southey had already written that in the mill houses of Pernambuco, during the first centuries of colonization, one found the decencies and comfort that would have been sought in vain among the populations of Paraguay and the River Plate (FREYRE, 2003, p. 79).
Brazil, the world’s largest sugar producer
Thus, everything conspired to make Brazil the world’s largest sugar producer. To give you an idea, by 1628 there were already about 235 mills in Brazil, the vast majority in the Northeast. Later, during Dutch rule, under the government of Maurice of Nassau (from 1637), the output of Pernambuco, Itamaracá, Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte exceeded 1 million arrobas (about 15,000 metric tons) a year (BUENO, 2003). For more on this period, see also Dutch Recife and Pernambuco Sugar Mills: History from Beginning to End.
There were, however, several types of mill, depending on the wealth of their owners: from small hand-operated mills, like the one in the image above, to large water-powered mills. Despite the differences, they all produced sugar and other cane products.
Who profited from sugar?
Despite the large number of mills, the real profit did not come from growing cane or making raw sugar. In fact, it came from refining and distributing sugar in Europe, activities that were usually controlled by the Dutch. Again according to Eduardo Bueno (2003, p. 45):
In any case, after one or two good harvests, several owners sold everything they had and returned to Portugal.
Still, the importance of the mill should not be underestimated just because refining and distribution were more profitable. After all, the mill did not play only an economic role, but above all a social and cultural one, as we will see next.
Sugar society and life on the mill
The mill as the core of colonial society
The colonial sugar mill was a complex of several buildings. There was, for example, the chapel, the purging house, the boiling house, the manioc flour house, the bagasse house, the mill wheel, the corral, the orchard, the cemetery and the senzala (slave quarters), which was often close to the casa-grande (the owner’s big house).
These were typically Portuguese buildings, with all the symbolism they would have had in Portugal. However, the people who lived in them came from very different cultures: Portuguese, Africans from various regions and Indigenous peoples.
For this reason, according to Freyre, the mill was the place where much of Afro-Brazilian culture took shape. There, white and Black people lived side by side, but always in an unequal relationship between masters and enslaved people.
Miscegenation and violence
Many colonizers, moreover, came to Brazil without their families. As a result, they had children with Indigenous and African women, often by force, since these women were enslaved and could not refuse. That is how racial mixing began, marked by violence. It is no coincidence, then, that Father Antônio Vieira compared the mill to a Babylon and to hell itself (apud BUENO, 2003, p. 48):
In short, the words of the famous Jesuit priest reinforce that it was the enslaved who did almost all the work in the colony.
The African presence according to Gilberto Freyre
For Freyre, after the Portuguese, no people influenced Brazilian culture as much as Africans did. In the comic book adaptation of Casa-grande & Senzala (FREYRE, 2001, p. 27), we read:
Almost every Brazilian bears the mark of this influence. From the Black woman who rocked him to sleep and nursed him.
From the sinhama (wet nurse) who fed him, shaping the ball of food with her own fingers.
Freyre also distinguished the major groups of Africans brought to Brazil. On the one hand, there were the Bantu peoples, such as those from Angola and the Congo. On the other, there were the peoples he called Sudanese, such as the Mina and Nagô of the Gold Coast, the Arda of Dahomey and the Hausa. Therefore, besides the Bantu languages, Africans in Brazil spoke languages such as Jeje, Hausa and Nagô (Yoruba) (FREYRE, 2001, p. 29).
How to read Freyre today
However, these passages must be read with care. Freyre wrote in 1933 and repeated many of the racial ideas of his time. For example, he attributed “temperaments” and aptitudes to each people: Africans were supposedly “extroverted” and Indigenous people “introverted”, some groups were “good for hard labor” and others for domestic service. Today, historians reject these generalizations, which served above all to justify slavery.
In fact, the weight of Africans in the sugar economy is explained by the mass slave trade organized by Europeans and by the agricultural and technical experience that many brought from Africa. Moreover, despite their extremely harsh lives, the enslaved showed early on their strength to survive and resist in a strange land that had taken away their freedom, for example through escapes and quilombos (communities of runaway slaves).
To illustrate daily life on the mill, the comic book adaptation of Casa-grande & Senzala (2001, p. 38) shows the relationship between the Portuguese and Africans on a northeastern mill:
Food on the mills
What, then, was life like on a 16th-century mill? What did people eat, what were social relations like and, finally, what problems did the inhabitants face?
According to Freyre, the food was surprisingly poor. Despite all the wealth from sugar and nature, the masters tried to imitate European habits:
Any abundance or excellence of provisions one might come across would be the exception, not the rule, among those great landowners (FREYRE, 2003, p. 98).
Furthermore, according to him:
Strange as it may seem, the table of our colonial aristocracy lacked fresh vegetables, fresh meat and milk. Hence, no doubt, many of the digestive diseases common at the time, which many a stubborn doctor attributed to “bad airs” (FREYRE, 2003, p. 98).
A lavish table? The romantic image
The following image, on the other hand, shows a lavish and varied table. However, it is a scene from 19th-century Rio de Janeiro, painted by Debret, and not the reality of the mills in the first centuries.
Too many sweets and festive banquets
Mary Del Priore and Renato Venâncio, in the Livro de Ouro da História do Brasil (The Golden Book of Brazilian History) (2001, p. 57-60), confirm this picture. According to the authors, even the richest planters ate badly: tough beef, little fruit and even fewer vegetables. On the other hand, they overindulged in sweets, such as guava paste, quince paste, cashew preserves, cane syrup, alfenins (sugar paste candies) and coconut sweets.
Only on special occasions, such as a priest’s visit, were the pantries opened and ducks, piglets and goats slaughtered. In Pernambuco, for example, “slave fishermen” were sent to fetch fish and shellfish. In addition, the masters suffered from stomach ailments, which the doctors of the time attributed to the “bad airs” of the tropics, and not to poor diet.
Where the mills were located
Again according to Del Priore and Venâncio, most mills were located in the forest, but not too far from the ports. After all, the forest offered fertile land and plenty of firewood for the furnaces, which sometimes ran day and night for eight or nine months. At the same time, those far from the coast spent more on transport and, therefore, could not compete.
In Pernambuco, the mills were set up along the rivers of the Zona da Mata (the coastal forest zone). Moreover, water was essential for the cattle, for the people and for driving the cane mills. That is why most mills stood on the banks of rivers such as the Paraguaçu, the Jaguaribe and the Sergipe, in Bahia, and the Beberibe, the Jaboatão, the Una and the Serinhaém, in Pernambuco.
The big house and the mill owner’s family
Inside, the big houses, true fortresses of adobe and rammed earth, were simple and even uncomfortable. The furniture was meager: cots, trunks, chests and coat racks, made by the mill’s carpenter. In fact, many preferred to sleep in hammocks on hot nights. The verandas, meanwhile, gave the master a view over the land, the cane and the people, while the ground floor, with its small openings, helped with defense against attacks.
Even so, some observers of the time were impressed by the whole. In 1587, for instance, the chronicler Gabriel Soares de Sousa described a “mill with large buildings and a church”. Besides that, on feast days, the simplicity of the house contrasted with the luxury of the clothing: according to Fernão Cardim, families dressed in velvets, damasks and silks. Weddings, in turn, were celebrated with banquets, bullfights, cane-tilting and ring-tilting games and wine from Portugal.
The names of the mills
The mills were also given names. Many were named after patron saints, such as São Francisco, São Cosme, São Damião and Santo Antônio. Others had African names, such as Massangana, or names of fruits and trees, such as Pau-de-Sangue, Cajueiro-de-Baixo and Jenipapo.
At the center of the family, the mill owner exercised authority over his children, poor relatives, siblings, illegitimate children, godchildren, dependents and enslaved people. His wife, sometimes much younger, lived in his shadow: she bore the children, took care of sewing, sweet-making and embroidery and devoted herself to religious practices. Nevertheless, in her husband’s absence, she took charge of the work with the same vigor.
In addition, according to Del Priore and Venâncio, there was a racial division of sexual life. The white wife was the lady of the house and the mother of the legitimate children. Indigenous women and, later, enslaved African and mixed-race women, by contrast, were treated as objects of the masters’ pleasure, in a relationship of violence and domination.
Cane farmers, free workers and dependents
The classic mill, tied to large plantations and slave labor, spread across the Northeast mainly in the 16th and 17th centuries. Although it required a great deal of capital, it also depended on small producers who supplied cane. A Dutch report from 1640, for example, states that only 40% of Pernambuco’s mills ground their own cane; the rest depended on cane from the farmers (DEL PRIORE; VENÂNCIO, 2001).
Likewise, the sugar enterprise did not involve only masters and enslaved people. There were also sugar masters, purgers, clerks, caulkers, coppersmiths, carpenters, masons and boatmen, among others. Besides them, merchants, smallholders, artisans and manioc and cane farmers enlivened the economic life of the coast. These owners had anywhere from two to dozens of enslaved people, which shows the variety of origins and situations.
Finally, in the 18th century, with the decline of sugar and the rise in manumissions, some freed people even became owners of partidos de cana (cane plots).
A society with little mobility
Despite these intermediate groups, the sugar society in colonial Brazil had little social mobility. At the top were the mill owner and his family; at the bottom, the enslaved; and between them, a group of cane farmers, free workers and dependents who relied, to a large extent, on the master.
In the 18th-century mining society, on the other hand, there was more mobility, since there were at least three layers: the rich miners and Crown officials; then the small miners, merchants, muleteers, soldiers, professionals and priests; and, lastly, the enslaved. The following image compares the two social pyramids.
Freyre on the divide between planters and backlanders
On sugar society, Gilberto Freyre states that:
Consequently, with similar economic interests.
Economic antagonism would emerge later between the men of capital, who could bear the costs of cane farming and the sugar industry, and those with fewer resources, forced to spread out across the backlands in search of slaves – a kind of living capital – or to stay there as cattle ranchers.
An antagonism that the vast land could tolerate without breaking the economic balance.
From it, however, would arise the anti-slavery Brazil, or the Brazil indifferent to the interests of slavery, represented by Ceará in particular, and in general by the sertanejo (backlander) or cowherd (FREYRE, 2003, p. 93).
Therefore, based on Freyre’s reflection, we can conclude that the sugarcane economy was exclusionary. Because it rested on slavery, it hindered the social advancement of poor free men, who, as a result, sought other activities deep in the backlands, such as cattle raising.
Religion and syncretism on the mill
Religion was also part of everyday life on the mill. After all, almost every mill had its own chapel, where the chaplain celebrated Masses, baptisms and weddings and, often, also educated the master’s children. Furthermore, as we have seen, many mills were named after patron saints.
However, the Catholic religion brought by the Portuguese was strongly influenced by Indigenous beliefs and, above all, by African religions. Forbidden to practice their faiths openly, many enslaved Africans began to associate their orixás (Yoruba deities) and other divinities with Catholic saints. In this way, a true syncretism emerged in many regions of Brazil, blending the three religious traditions.
Frequently asked questions about the sugar society in colonial Brazil
What was sugar society?
It was the society that formed in colonial Brazil around the sugar mills, mainly in the Northeast, in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was patriarchal, aristocratic and, above all, based on slave labor.
How was sugar society divided?
At the top were the mill owner and his family. Next came an intermediate group of cane farmers, free workers and dependents. Finally, at the bottom, were the enslaved Africans and Indigenous people.
Was there social mobility in sugar society?
Very little. Although some farmers and, in the 18th century, even some freed people became landowners, slavery and the concentration of land made it hard for poor free men to rise.
What was life like in the big house?
It was simpler than one might imagine. The houses were fortified and had little furniture; in addition, the food was poor, with tough meat and few vegetables. On the other hand, on feast days there were silk clothes, banquets and wine from Portugal.
What is the difference between sugar society and mining society?
Sugar society was rural and had little social mobility. By contrast, the 18th-century mining society was more urban and had more intermediate layers, such as merchants, muleteers, soldiers and professionals.
Who profited most from sugar?
Not the mill owners. In fact, the biggest profit went to the merchants who shipped, refined and distributed sugar in Europe, largely the Dutch. As a result, many masters lived in debt.
See the following Periods of Colonial Brazilian History
- Independence of Brazil – Breaking the Colonial Ties in Brazil
- The Portuguese Empire in Brazil – The Portuguese Royal Family in Brazil
- Transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil
- Founding of the City of São Paulo and the Bandeirantes
- Transition Period between Colonial Brazil and Imperial Brazil
- Monoculture, Slave Labor and Large Estates in Colonial Brazil
- Establishment of the General Government in Brazil and the Founding of Salvador
- Portuguese Maritime Expansion and the Conquest of Brazil
- Occupation of the African Coast and the Atlantic Islands, and Vasco da Gama’s Voyage
- Pedro Álvares Cabral’s Expedition and the Conquest of Brazil
- Pre-Colonial Period in Brazil – The Forgotten Years
- Establishment of the Portuguese Colony in Brazil
- Periods of Colonial Brazilian History
- Historical Periods of Brazil
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