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Rose Hall Plantation, Jamaica

More than a million travelers each year come to Jamaica for the beautiful beaches and tropical climate. No doubt a few come for sex or drugs. Either way travelers looking for a tropical paradise are often less interested in learning about Jamaica’s sordid past. Jamaica provides an excellent example of how tourism can get the upper hand in a poor country, because in Jamaica history — specifically the sordid and horrid history of the slave trade — has been placed in the background while entertaining visitors is given top priority.

Perhaps there is no better place in Jamaica to illustrate this than the Rose Hall plantation. The plantation resides on a beautiful and calm grassy hill close to the tourist center of Montego Bay, where it offers a stunning view of the Caribbean ocean. Once upon a time this was one of Jamaica’s most prosperous plantations, called “the greatest of the Great Houses”. According to a widespread myth, the estate has a violent history. In the 1820s, when Annie Palmer was mistress of Rose Hall, she is said to have killed three of her husbands and thousands of her slaves. Today, the plantation has been transformed into a tourist attraction and those visiting are presented something quite different than a solemn historical site.

On the grounds where the plantation slaves worked themselves to death there is now a golf course, while the fields closer to the house are available for up-scale weddings. The only building that has been preserved is the magnificent Great House, built by slaves in 1770. The guided tour of the premises revolves around this house and its riches. Inside of the house, the guide focus on detailed descriptions of the exquisite furniture, the beautiful silk wallpaper and 18th-century art work.

Occasionally she also provides a gruesome anecdote about the many slaves who resided here. We are told that when slaves were inside the house they had to constantly whistle. Otherwise they were accused of stealing food, and beheaded. The worst stories are about children being tortured, whipped for spilling water, but all anecdotes and historical facts are told in an entertaining style, intercepted by jokes, as if it were details in a thrilling ghost story.

Annie Palmer herself is of course a thoroughly intriguing character that is not left alone by the guide’s narrative. Remarkably enough, slavery is never mentioned to explain her legendary cruelty. Instead, Palmer is portrayed as an exciting white witch, a fascinatingly wicked woman “gone native” because of her black voodoo-practising nanny. An earlier lady of the house is even called “the good mistress”, an expression which bluntly suggests that slavery can be a beneficial system if only governed by a “good” slave master. In spite of all the bloody details, the complete amnesia about slavery is the scariest thing about Rose Hall.

The tour ends in a place of death and terror — the prison dungeons — although they are now turned into a chic gift shop where only a dusty old bear-trap tell of a bloodier history (because there are no bears in Jamaica, bear traps were used to capture runaway slaves). The slaves, ancestors of the majority of Jamaica’s modern population, are placed in the background as anonymous victims, much in the same way as they were treated by Annie herself.

The Rose Hall plantation is located nearby the Rose Hall Highway, 9 miles (15 km) east of Montego Bay. The plantation is open for visitors daily 9am to 6pm, with the last tour starting at 5:15pm.

–Emilia Ljungberg

Planning a trip to Jamaica? Browse Viator’s complete list of tours in Montego Bay, things to do in Negril, Ocho Rios activities, and sightseeing in Trelawny. If you need a place to stay, check out Jamaica Hotels on Planetware.com.