It began with the order to “Fire!” given by a British Inspector of Police against Chinese students and workers demonstrating in the course of a textile strike in Shanghai on May 30, 1925. Twelve Chinese were killed and 17 wounded. The Shanghai Incident, as it came to be called, was only one incident in a train of history but, like those other shots from British rifles called the Boston Massacre, it was fuel for an upheaval that led to sovereignty.
