] Over 80% of the people in Pemberely are Americans who have had it hammered into them at an early age that slavery is their national shame,

Hadn't thought of that angle: thanks for pointing it out, and my apologies for being thick.

In that case, two cheers for American history teaching. In an awful lot of other countries, the embarrassing bits of history are swept under the carpet (I had the Opium Wars presented to me at school as a triumph of British diplomacy).

Why only two cheers? Because the overwhelming cultural influence of America means that slavery and the slave trade elsewhere in the world gets ignored. We've had a long, long thread devoted essentially to the factual question of how much slavery there was in Antigua - and it hasn't been that easy to find the answer, because Antigua is not, in general, culturally dominant. Another example: I've been doing research into the life of Olaudah Equiano, who was captured as a boy in what is now Nigeria, spent many years as a skilled and valued slave as a sailor in the West Indies, and later lived and died a free man in Britain. He is frequently described as an African-American, despite the fact that he spent only short visits to America as a trader.

] On anywhere but L, slavery isn't a historical fact, it's a political opinion.... Why bring the subject up at all on boards where historical accuracy isn't paramount?

Even on the Mansfield Park board? I'm sorry I raised this issue in the first place in a throwaway line on AOA when we were talking about ethics in JA, and which characters were ethically dubious - if I expected any heat at all, it was in saying that Captain Wentworth had done a fair bit of harm to the crews of the privateers and frigate he'd captured. I'd better keep my mouth shut a bit more.

] I've never seen The Patriot, so I'll have to take your word for it.

Don't. Even the presence of Mel Gibson and a quite good fight scene aren't enough to save it; the film-makers also invent a British atrocity, and turn that dashing figure Banastre Tarleton into a sadistic villain.