Planning the Past studies the way a post-colonial society reconstructs its national history and grapples with its colonial past, specifically in Port Royal, a Jamaican village with a dramatic history of pirates, naval admirals, and earthquakes. Anita M. Waters argues that the plans for Port Royal's heritage tourism development represent a chronological record of historical revisionism, and the fact that none of the plans has been realized reflects post-colonial social processes and national ambivalence about piratical and naval history. This interdisciplinary study will be valuable reading for students of historiography, piracy, Caribbean history, Caribbean politics, and heritage tourism.

"Waters' Planning the Past represents an important case study of the contested and changing representations of history and heritagem, one that sheds light on Jamaica's relationship with its colonial past and the region's continuing struggle with historicity and authenticity." - Museum Anthropology, December 2007

"This is an interesting and thought-provoking study..." - H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online