The Sassoon Files takes place in the world of 1920s Shanghai. There are two parts of this setting: the historical and the Mythos. This blog post series is about the historical settings… the background which the player characters may know about as they begin their investigations.
Sun Yat-sen was born into a relatively prosperous Chinese family with international ties. He attended a missionary grade school in Hawaii, where his brother owned a large cattle ranch, and later went on to study medicine in Hong Kong. Sun Yat-sen converted Christianity and was baptized in Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong, he associated with similar well-educated intellectuals who were interested in the modernization and liberalization of China
In response to the humiliation China received from Japan in the first Sino-Japanese war, Sun Yat-sen tried to found a revolutionary society in 1895. But that effort failed, leading to his exile to Japan. In exile, Sun Yat-sen formed relationships and an extensive network of British, American, Japanese, Filipino and Malaysian politicians, scholars, philosophers and activists.
One of Sun Yat-sen’s admirers and co-conspirators from this time was a young man named Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang, an intensely intelligent and bellicose young man from a wealthy family, went to Japan to study military science in a Japanese military preparatory school, but soon became deeply involved with Sun Yat-sen’s Chinese nationalism society. Chiang Kai-shek developed relationships with Chinese underground societies called “Triads”; including a relationship with the “Green Gang”, Shanghai’s strongest Triad-backed gang headed by “Pockmark” Huang Jinrong and “Big Eared” Du Yuesheng.
Sun Yat-sen unsuccessfully initiated revolutionary movements in 1900 and 1907.His failures led to further internal struggles, including “anti-Sun” movements in the various societies and discussion groups he had initially organized.
Over the course of the previous century, the Qing Dynasty stagnated politically and technologically. The Qing Dynasty, headed by its putative leader the Empress Dowager Cixi, struggled to modernize and oust the occupying foreign forces. The Qing Dynasty put the onus for modernization on the provincial governors, who all came from a class of landed aristocracy. The result of this “New Army” initiative was the creation of many separate modern army units loyal to provincial warlords.
On October 10th, 1911, 2000 years of imperial rule ended when the “New Army” soldiers of the Qing dynasty revolted in what became known as the “Xinhai Revolution”. Sun returned to China, where a small council of army officers and local warlords elected Sun to be the first President of the new Republic of China.
After the Xinhai revolution, China became a nominal republic where each province was ruled by a warlord. In some cases, the warlords fought with each other for control of territory. Sun Yat-sen gained the tentative support of the warlords in the Southern portions of China. In the North, the General Yuan Shikai consolidated his power and declared himself emperor of China for a brief period before being forced to abdicate.
For the 10 years following the Xinhai revolution, Sun Yat-sen and his closest ally, Chiang Kai-shek struggled to bring warlords to their cause, and fight off political rivals within the newly formed Nationalist Party (abbreviated as “KMT” for Kuo Min Tang (国民党).
