The crucial element in the manufacture of sugar was the slaves. The conditions under which they lived and worked are a key to the nature of the society that grew from the sugar economy. The relationships of slaves to engenhos and of slaves to the means and process of production are foci of concern. A great deal has been written about the physical condition of slaves in Brazil, although much of it is contradictory. This chaper will briefly outline these physical conditions, but the fundamental topic here will be the work of sugar making, its nature and requirements, for this above all determined the life of the men and women who labored in field and mill.

In the seventeenth century, many planters seem to have subscribed to the three-p theory of slave management mentioned by Antonil: pau (the rod), pāo (bread), and pano (clothing). Foreign observers such as Johan Nieuhoff, who visited Brazil in that century, invariably spoke of the brutality of the slave regime and noted that Brazilian slaves were poorly fed, housed, and clothed.