Working Conditions

As the Europeans gained as much profit from the newfound cash crop, sugar--in addition to cotton and tobacco--as they did it was easy to forget who they owed it all to, the slaves. African slaves worked under brutal conditions. Many African slaves were dehydrated, sick, and dying. Meanwhile the landowner would claim the profit of their work in its entirety. "Sugar planting, harvesting, and processing is tiring, hot, dangerous work and requires a large number of workers whose work habits must be intensely coordinated and controlled. From the very beginning of sugar cultivation in the New World, there were not enough European settlers to satisfy the labor requirements for profitable sugar plantations. Native Americans were enslaved to work on the earliest sugar plantations, especially in Brazil. Those who could, escaped from the fields, but many more died due to European diseases, such as smallpox and scarlet fever, and the harsh working conditions on the sugar plantations." (West, Jean)