From Demerara to Swan River: Charles Dawson Ridley and James Walcott in Western Australia

This article aims to explore links between the abolition of slavery in the British Empire and the colonisation of Western Australia by tracing the lives of some of the first settlers to arrive in 1830. Starting with the Legacies of British Slavery (LBS) database of slave-owner compensation claims, I examine the movement of Charles Dawson Ridley and James Walcott and their families from Demerara, now Guyana, to Swan River, now Perth, Western Australia. Recent research has identified links between recipients of slave compensation after 1833, when Britain abolished slavery, and subsequent reinvestment of these funds in the Australasian settler colonies. However, the figures I examine here participated in the foundation of Swan River, which preceded abolition by four years, exemplifying a more complex process of imperial reorientation.