Planning the Past: Heritage Tourism and Post-Colonial Politics at Port Royal Paperback – August 19, 2006

Port Royal is a sleepy little village of about 1200 people lying on a spit of sand at the entrance to the harbor in Kingston, Jamaica. It is also one of the most historic places in the West Indies. Port Royal became the center for piracy in the Caribbean in the late 17th century, with the encouragement of the British Crown. It is often said to have been the "richest" and "wickedest" city in the world when, in 1692, it was sudden swallowed up in large measure by the sea in a catastrophic earthquake. Afterwards, Port Royal was rebuilt as the center for British naval operations in the Caribbean, with Horatio Nelson serving briefly there as a young man.Port Royal has considerable potential for "heritage tourism" - that is, people will come to visit it for its historical importance - and heritage tourism is growing rapidly around the world today. This is particularly important for Jamaica, as its economy is increasingly dependent on tourism.This short book is an ethnographic and archival study of seven failed plans since 1965 to develop Port Royal as a heritage tourism destination. It raises interesting and important questions about how we remember the past, and why. Various interest groups have presented alternative interpretations of the past, highlighting the earthquake, British settlement, naval history, piracy, colonial architecture, and archaeology. What about the black majority of the island? Are they to be invisible, historically? Is the heritage project for largely black Jamaicans or for largely white tourists? Is it for cruise ship passengers or for Jamaican school children? Can it be for everyone?One topic of discussion that will be of particular interest to many is piracy. Why are Americans so enamored of pirates these days? If you read any scholarly study of pirates, you will find that they were loathsome outlaws. Jamaicans see them as despicable criminals who laid the foundation for the white colonial, slave-holding planter aristocracy. The author, a sociologist, sees pirates as a symbol of "unbounded white privilege," representing "freedom from rules." The history of the Caribbean is largely a story of individuals, corporations, and colonizing nations seeking to enrich themselves, by hook or by crook, to the tune of much human misery and suffering. In the words of one famous calypso, it was "capitalism gone mad." How and why do we memorialize that?

What does history mean in practice? We know that it is not something fixed and eternal, but changes generation by generation as we reinterpret it in the light of our own needs and experiences. Waters examines a historic community, the village of Port Royal, across the harbour from Jamaica's capital, Kingston, and considers how different plans for developing tourism -- none of which have come to fruition -- have sought to use the town's history as a selling point. Along the way, she notes an important distinction between European and North American perceptions of pirates and those of black Jamaicans.