Carl Fredrik Liljevalch, Sr.
Carl Fredrik Liljevalch (10 July 1796, in Lund – 24 June 1870, in Stockholm) was a Swedish businessman, entrepreneur and diplomat. Liljevalch was long active in the Swedish forest industry and organized the Sweden's two first circumnavigations. Liljevalch is the father of Carl Fredrik Liljevalch, Jr., whose estate laid the foundation of Liljevalchs konsthall in Stockholm.
In the wake of the First Opium War, King Oscar I sent Liljevalch to China in order to conclude a commercial treaty with China. In March 1847, Liljevalch and Manchu statesman Qiying concluded the Treaty of Canton, which was the first treaty between Sweden-Norway and China. The Treaty was almost identical with the Sino-American Treaty of Wanghia, which had been concluded three years earlier, and it gave Sweden-Norway the same privileges as other treaty powers. The treaty remained in force well into the twentieth century.
On returning home, he published an account of his time in China called Chinas handel industri och statsförfattning jemte underrättelser om chinesernes folkbilding, seder och bruk samt notiser om Japan, Siam m. fl. (China's trade industry and government, and accounts of the education of the Chinese people; their customs and habits; and notices of Japan, Siam, and other.), in 1848. He settled on the island Gotland where he lived for several years, wanting to establish the cultivation of white-beets for sugar production.
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