Brazil at the Dawn of the Eighteenth Century

Book One

15 [ book one ] chapter i y The Resources a Royal Sugar Mill Owner Should Possess To be a sugar planter is a title to which many people aspire. It brings with it the service, the obedience, and the respect of many others. If he is, as he ought to be, a man of wealth and command, a sugar planter in Brazil can be esteemed proportionally to the titled nobility in the Kingdom of Portugal. There are some sugar mills in Bahia that yield the owner four thousand loaves of sugar, and others a little less. This figure includes the cane from tenants which has to be pressed in the mill, and to which the mill is entitled to at least half, as well as that which is pressed with no obligation.1 In some other places in Brazil the mill receives even more than half. Tenants depend on the planters. They rent fields on the lands belonging to the mill, as citizens do from nobles. When the planters are wealthier and have all the necessary provisions and are good-natured and truthful, then they are all the more sought after as landlords. This is true even for those who do not have their cane held captive, either by long-standing obligation or for the price that they receive for it. Slaves serve the sugar planter with various functions with hoes and sickles, which he keeps on the plantation and in the mill. He is also served by mulattoes and negros, both male and female, occupied in household duties or in other jobs such as boatmen, canoe men, caulkers, carpenters, ox cart drivers, potters, cowboys, herdsmen, and fishermen. Each of these planters is also bound to have a sugar master, a banqueiro, an assistant banqueiro,2 a refiner, a bookkeeper on the plantation and ...