Sold – Signed Photograph of Sun Yat Sen, Inscribed to the U.S. Consul General in Shanghai

Sun was a young member of the old Chinese ruling class who had been educated in the west. He wanted to strengthen a weakening China from within by drawing on its natural resources in conjunction with new business expansion, and he tried to interest powerful officials in his schemes for economic development.

By 1894, however, China was sliding into chaos as the Manchu dynasty weakened and Japan defeated China in a brief and humiliating war. Sun attempted to lead an insurrection in southeast China in 1895 but failed. By 1905, Sun developed a coherent set of guiding principles that became the ideology of a broad-based revolutionary movement that he founded. In this new ideology, which he termed the "Three Principles of the People," Sun combined the fundamental aspects of nationalism, democracy and socialism with a comprehensive plan for restoring economic and moral strength to his country, first by expelling the Manchus and then by curbing the foreign powers.

When the Manchu dynasty at last collapsed in 1911, in large part because of the ceaseless pressure exerted by Sun and his revolutionary followers, he was named provisional President of the new Chinese Republic. Sun’s Nationalist Party (or Kuomintang) won more seats than any of its rivals in China’s first-ever national elections in early 1913. But Sun and his party could not curb the emerging powers of the new military and political strongmen.

Late in the year he was forced once more into exile. In 1916, Sun returned to China to resume his political activity, and shifting between Shanghai and Canton, the cities that seemed to offer the best potential political bases. He died in 1925 with his goals unfulfilled. He is nonetheless considered the founder of modern China.

Signed photograph. A 10 by 13 1/2 inch photograph of him taken by Burr of Shanghai, inscribed “To Hon. Thomas Sammons from Sun Yat Sen.”

Thomas Sammons was the U.S. Consul General in Shanghai from 1916-19, and this magnificent photograph clearly dates from those years. This is the first signed photograph of Sun that we have ever seen and it comes in its original presentation folder. There is a light crease across the image; it is otherwise in fine condition.