What may come as a surprise is that his ancestor was not a slave trader but a slave:
'I am the proud offspring of Turkish immigrants. I want you to know that my great-great-grandmother was a slave, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr Livingstone. She was a Circassian slave [from a region in southern Russia], and she was sold: my great-great-grandfather literally purchased her.'On a side note: the Guardian's description of white slavery (at the bottom of the quoted article) employs a curious turn of phrase when it says (emphasis added):
Around half a million Circassians ended up in Turkey, where many of the women entered the white slave trade. They were seen as more prestigious than Africans, also enslaved by the Turks, but a report in the London Post in 1856 recorded that the market had become so swamped that 'never, perhaps, at any time was white human flesh so cheap'."Entered the slave trade" makes it sound voluntary.
Just to be clear: slave traders entered the slave trade, the victims entered slavery.
