Louis De Geer was a Walloon-Swedish entrepreneur, banker, industrialist and slave trader, who was part of the prominent De Geer family. A pioneer of foreign direct investment in the early modern period, De Geer is considered to be both the father of Swedish industry for introducing Walloon blast furnaces to Sweden and the father of the Swedish slave trade for pioneering Sweden's involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Furnaces owned by De Geer produced cannons for German Protestants and the Dutch Navy and the Dutch East and West India Companies.

Walloons are a Gallo-Romance ethnic group native to Wallonia and the immediate adjacent regions of Flanders, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Walloons primarily speak langues d'oïl such as Belgian French, Picard and Walloon. Walloons are primarily Roman Catholic, with a historical minority of Protestantism which dates back to the Reformation era.