This is not my specialty, but I can recomend some starting points.

Because I am Brazilian, I'm more familiar with Brazilian historiography, but a good place to start for you would be Stuart B. Schwartz's "Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society" (1985) and "Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels" (1992), which are classics and we read them in class when I was studying Colonial Brazil.

A Brazilian authority in slavery was Manolo Florentino, but I don't think he wrote a lot in English. His work about the slave trade is very important, though, so try looking for him in works cited.

Maria Helena P.T. Machado and Rafael Bivar Marquese have published in English and quite recently. Both tend to focus on 19th century, Machado working a lot with gender and Bivar on a comparative perspective centered on coffee plantations. I looked him up and found one article comparing Brazilian and Cuban coffee and sugar plantations which could interest you or have more relevant bibliography for you. Daniel Strum researches the sugar trade and has written in English and although I'm not familiar with his work, I thought it was worth mentioning. This is a bit of a biased selection because these three are from the same university, the University of São Paulo, where I studied. As I said, this is not my field of study, so I'm pulling from memory here.

Best of luck!

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