[ Shanghai M 1900 Pistol-Carbine ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're taking a look at
one of my very favourite Chinese
domestic pistol designs. This is a scaled up,
like a pistol-carbine version of the FN Model of 1900,
and these were manufactured at the Shanghai Arsenal
in China between 1916 and 1921.
Now, if you are interested in Chinese pistols from this period,
you should definitely check out the Kickstarter I currently
have running for my upcoming book on this subject.
We cover these and a whole smorgasbord more.
But, to continue on this story.
What we have here: the FN 1900 was a particularly popular pistol in China.
One of the two most popular pistol designs, that and the Broomhandle Mauser.
And the Shanghai Arsenal (which by the way was set up basically
along western industrial lines under ... a relatively stable national government
before the Warlord Era really descended into total chaos),
this arsenal produced standard actual exact copies of the FN 1900,
and this sort of large scale pistol-carbine version.
So let me show you this up close.
For reference sake: here is our large pistol-carbine type FN 1900,
here is ... a copy of a totally standard FN pattern 1900 pistol.
This was actually made by the Jinling Arsenal.
Shanghai Arsenal did make these standard copies as well as the large versions,
but I had this one handy to show you.
So, you can see the ... similarities here, these both operate in exactly the same way.
The FN 1900 was really the first practical civilian ... semi-auto carry pistol.
And it's got some distinctive features,
largely like the barrel being below the tube up here, which contains the recoil spring.
And you can see we have the same system right here on our large version.
What the Shanghai Arsenal did with this design
was basically scale it up to sort of mimic the C96 Mauser.
So we have a tangent sight here on the back.
And this is fully functional, unlike a lot of domestic Chinese pistols.
It goes out to 500 metres.
These were actually manufactured on a true
western-style production line with interchangeable parts.
I don't know exactly how strictly interchangeable
parts of different examples of these pistols are.
But they are certainly all the same part made on the same tooling.
And they may require a bit of hand fitting to try and interchange,
but they are fundamentally all the exact same design.
The sight picture here is actually reasonable.
So you've got a front blade and then,
a V-notch rear sight. It's a little hard to get the full sight picture with
focus issues with the camera here, but that's what it looks like.
The back of the grip was actually given more material,
like there's an extra boss here that then has a slot cut in it for a shoulder stock.
Which is something that the Chinese really liked with the C96 Mauser.
Unfortunately I have yet to find any example of a shoulder stock for these pistols.
But I expect it would be very much like the C96,
where it functioned as both holster and shoulder stock.
The magazine catch here is exactly the same as on the FN 1900s,
so you actually push it towards the magazine, and then you can pull the magazine out.
(This one's a little tight.)
It is a 10 round, single stacked magazine, and the pistols
are chambered for .32 ACP, just like the standard FN 1900.
Now the grips have some Chinese characters moulded into them.
And this side actually identifies the year of manufacture.
This says, "Made for the Republic of China in the Tenth Year".
That character right there is the numeral 10.
Tenth year is based on a calendar starting in 1911 at the Chinese revolution.
So this would be a 1921 production,
which is at the very end of the known production timeframe.
That said, this has a serial number of 1733.
We have identified, we've observed examples up to serial number 4319.
It is unclear as to whether the Shanghai production of these large versions
and the small versions were made in the same serial number range, or if they were separate.
So, I can't be entirely sure if there were ... 4,300 of these large pistols made,
or just 4,300 FN 1900 pattern guns in general.
Anyway, the grip on the other side, this is the left side grip,
basically it just says "Shanghai Arsenal".
We have a manual safety here, exactly the same in function as a regular FN 1900.
Now to disassemble the gun I just have to pull these two screws out,
and then the breech block will come out and the slide will come off.
Mechanically, this is a John Browning designed pistol.
There's a tremendous amount of very cool history behind the FN 1900
that we will get into in a standalone video on the original Belgian production guns.
So, with those two screws out,
I can now separate the slide from the breech block and frame.
So I'm actually just going to pull the slide off the front of the gun.
And there we have ... this guy.
Now the breech block is held onto the frame by this little sort of C clamp there,
that clamps around the recoil spring guide.
So if I pull the spring out, there we go, we can lift that free.
And then the breech block assembly comes out the back of the pistol.
Now with the exception of the recoil spring being longer because the barrel's longer,
and having this tangent rear sight instead of a simple rear notch sight,
this is essentially identical to John Browning's FN 1900 design.
So, the main spring here acts as the striker spring, as you can see right there.
It is captive, and that's in Chinese production examples and the original Browning design.
It's really a very clever little pistol.
So the frame of the gun here has basically nothing to it, except the trigger mechanism.
You pull the trigger, the sear drops, and that releases the striker to go forward.
Note that we have the serial number repeated here
on the inside of the frame, as well as on the outside.
And we have a 5.5 inch barrel,
up from the approximately 4 inch barrel of the standard-size FN 1900.
Now I've mentioned that these pistols were made at a legitimate arsenal
on a real western-style production line,
and they are high quality, and have more-or-less interchangeable parts.
However, one of the things that fascinates me about Chinese domestic handgun design
is how they had this disparity of really good quality stuff, and also really pretty poor quality.
And it is fascinating that we also have an example here of a domestic Chinese ...
essentially a Chinese knock-off of a Chinese design.
So obviously you can tell that this is the same basic style of pistol,
but it's clearly not arsenal made.
If we take a look at the left side, it has this just string of complete gibberish markings,
which we've kind of come to expect on stereotypical artisanal production Chinese pistols.
And that extends to the grips as well,
where, and this is I suppose perhaps carved into a single example, or actually moulded into grips.
Some backwards lettering, there's a picture of a pistol, but it's not a picture of this pistol.
We have this very odd dog sort of creature here on the right grip.
And some other separate gibberish markings.
There is a serial number on this gun, 2324, but it almost certainly
is not indicative of actual serial production of this pattern.
Because this isn't quite the same in any area as a real Shanghai 1900 pistol-carbine.
For example, if we look at the bottom of the frame, you can see that the real gun here
has a rather narrower frame to it,
and it has a nice rounded profile at the front strap of the grip.
Where the copy is wider, probably because it's ... easier to use more material than less.
And it's much more squared off at the front.
The magazine is of a different design.
You can see the magazine floor plate is held on here by
a pair of relatively crude bent-over lips.
If we look at details like the construction of the trigger guard,
you can see that on the real gun we have the frame solid up here,
and then it drops down to the trigger guard, and we've got a little bit of a flat.
Where this is really a rather different pattern.
The frame itself up here drops straight down into the trigger guard.
The side panel here extends all the way down, where it doesn't on the real version.
One of the typical characteristics of artisanal Chinese pistols
is a lack of manufacture of functional sights.
On the real gun here you can see this (pretty typical for professional firearms manufacturing)
where the rear sight has a larger cutout in the front
to help gather light, and then a V notch behind.
Where on the copy we just have a simple notch cut through the rear sight.
And that notch is actually too small to even be recognisable as a sight notch on the back.
Where the real gun has a nice reasonably deep V.
Just in general we have a much lower standard of manufacturing
on the copy than we do on the arsenal production gun.
Which really shouldn't be any surprise, but I think it's really cool,
like I said, to have a Chinese copy of a Chinese copy.
As I said at the beginning, this is one of my very favourite designs.
So, in fact so much so that while these are both in the upcoming book by the way,
which I have a link to the ongoing Kickstarter down in the description text.
If you are interested in these, definitely check out the book.
There is, I think, a fantastic Kickstarter exclusive cover design
that I bet you'll really get a kick out of.
At any rate, in the process of writing the book I acquired one of these pistols for myself,
and tomorrow I am actually going to go ahead
and run that through one of our backup gun matches
and see how it does. Because what could go wrong, right?
Well, these are actual factory-made pistols, made to a very high standard of quality.
And hopefully it won't blow up in my face, but I guess we'll find out.
Hope you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.