Boosting tourism would help US image

Next year, Massachusetts officials in charge of promoting tourism should spy on Virginia. Four hundred years ago next year, colonists founded the settlement of Jamestown.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has been planning a massive celebration for several years now, in part intended to attract visitors.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts experts should take heed, and start planning for the year 2020, the 400th anniversary of the founding of Plymouth.

Tourism matters more to Massachusetts than many south-of-Boston residents may suspect. It is the third-largest industry in the state, supporting 124,000 jobs. But it does less well than it should.

Foreign affairs affect international tourist travel. Newspaper readers know that many Europeans and South Americans dislike aspects of American foreign policy. Such dislike often means loss of visitors.

Between 1992 and 2005, the United States experienced a 36 percent drop in foreign tourism.

This translates into $42 billion in lost revenue that would go far toward off setting the overseas trade imbalance.

Far more important are the lost opportunities for foreign guests to learn something about the genuine friendliness of Americans at home and perhaps especially about the history Americans take for granted but that shapes foreign policy.

In 2004 US Representative William Delahunt inaugurated the Massachusetts Cultural Coast initiative, a special program linking the National Park Service with coastal south-of-Boston chambers of commerce that works to bolster both domestic and overseas tourism.

As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Delahunt knows both the monetary and goodwill value of attracting tourists to Southeastern Massachusetts. But more needs to be done, and Virginia has at least begun showing the way.

Jamestown and Plymouth are the two seminal British colonies in North America. Schoolchildren around the world learn about them in mythic ways.

Jamestown represents the first thrust of a great commercial undertaking that produced the tobacco, indigo, and cotton plantation South.

Plymouth represents something even area residents not interested in history acknowledge : the Mayflower Compact, the first effort at self-government and religious freedom which evolved into the Constitution.

Plymouth Colony had been functioning for a decade, albeit with a bit of trouble , together with a tiny upstart at Merrymount in Quincy (which was broken up by Myles Standish and John Endicott), before settlers arrived at Boston. Not for nothing is it still called the Old Colony, even by the MBTA.

But the Old Colony, including Cape Cod and much of the state west , toward the Rhode Island border, remained agricultural and poor for decades. Boston overtook its shipping industry

Many newer colonies such as New Amsterdam, New Hampshire, and New Jersey lack the historical depth of Plymouth .

Virginia and the Old Colony harbored differences that led to the Civil War, and long after the end of that war, thoughtful Americans contributed to build the Forefather's Monument, the Myles Standish memorial, and other edifices that memorialize what the Pilgrim Society Museum and Plimoth Plantation teach in sophisticated format. A terrific part of American culture originated in the Old Colony.

In the 1970s, public school educators focused less on Colonial history and more on immigration, multiculturalism, and other 20th-century social issues.

Few high school seniors study the 1620 to 1776 period much at all today, but its heirlooms stand everywhere south of Boston.

The push for standardized curricula and testing has unwittingly lessened chances for classroom and schoolwide innovation.

It might be time to encourage municipalities to emphasize local history in ways that connect students with local museums and landmarks. Such an effort might well empower the children of immigrants.

To succeed in the United States, especially financially, has always involved leaving behind old-country ideas and mastering the nuances between the lines of schoolbook history.

The entire region south of Boston should form a loose coalition involving businesses, museums, educational institutions, and government agencies to produce a systematic tourism-generating operation.

Not only is there enough history in this region to overwhelm anyone deciding to enumerate its components, there is also a powerful opportunity to bolster regional businesses by attracting tourists in ways that do not overburden local roads.

Tourist buses linking MBTA rail stations with historic sites and local business areas, the way the Cape Ann Transit Authority has done on summer weekends, might be a good starting point.

In a few years, without spending much money, this region could have a smooth-running tourism system expanding annually to welcome ever-larger numbers of domestic and foreign visitors.

Creating such a system would cause area residents to decide what cultural facets they want to preserve and bolster.

It would also go a long way toward improving America's overseas image, one foreign tourist at a time.

Norwell resident John Stilgoe is Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape at Harvard University.