In the course of the nineteenth century, Jamaica transformed itself from
a pestilence-ridden "white man's graveyard" to a sun-drenched tourist
paradise. Deftly combining economics with political and cultural
history, Frank Fonda Taylor examines this puzzling about-face and
explores the growth of the tourist industry into the 1990s. He argues
that the transformations in image and reality were not accidental or due
simply to nature's bounty. They were the result of a conscious decision
to develop this aspect of Jamaica's economy.
Jamaican tourism emerged formally at an international exhibition held on
the island in 1891. The international tourist industry, based on the
need to take a break from stressful labor and recuperate in healthful
and luxurious surroundings, was a newly awakened economic giant. A group
of Jamaican entrepreneurs saw its potential and began to cultivate a
tourism psychology which has led, more than one hundred years later, to
an economy dependent upon the tourist industry.
The steamships that carried North American tourists to Jamaican resorts
also carried U.S. prejudices against people of color. "To Hell
withParadise" illustrates the problems of founding a tourist industry
for a European or U.S. clientele in a society where the mass of the
population is poor, black, and with a historical experience of slavery
and colonialism. By the 1990s, tourism had become the lifeblood of the
Jamaican economy, but at an enormous cost: enclaves of privilege and
ostentation that exclude the bulk of the local population, drug
trafficking and prostitution, soaring prices, and environmental
degradation. No wonder some Jamaicans regard tourism as a new kind of
sugar.
Taylor explores timely issues that have not been previously addressed.
Along the way, he offers a series of valuable micro histories of the
Jamaican planter class, the origins of agricultural dependency (on
bananas), the growth of shipping and communications links, the process
of race relations, and the linking of infrastructural development to
tourism. The text is illustrated with period photographs of steamships
and Jamaican tourist hotels.
