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Rare ink signature in Chinese and English, “Sun Yat Sen, China,” on an off-white 5.5 x 7 black-bordered sheet of letterhead belonging to British solicitor and Unionist politician Robert Chancellor Nesbitt, who adds the date below, “20 Nov’r 1911,” and writes above, “This is the signature of Dr. Sun Yat Sen.” In very fine condition, with a central horizontal mailing fold. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope addressed to Nesbitt’s office at 7 Devonshire Square in London, postmarked November 20, 1911, with Nesbitt annotating the front in blue pencil, “Signature of Sun Yat Sen, for whom I acted, R.C.N.”
When the Wuchang Uprising erupted in October 1911, Sun Yat-sen was in the midst of a fundraising tour in the United States, seeking support for his long-standing revolutionary movement aimed at toppling the Qing dynasty. Recognizing that the revolution had begun, he immediately redirected his efforts toward international diplomacy and traveled to Europe, where he sought to influence the great powers, particularly Great Britain and France, to refrain from supporting the Qing imperial government either financially or militarily.
By late November 1911, Sun had successfully secured assurances of neutrality. On November 20, 1911—the very date of this signature—he departed London for China, marking the most critical point in his political career and coming just over a month before his return to China after ten years in enforced exile. He arrived in Shanghai on December 25, 1911, and, just a few days later, on December 29, a provisional assembly in Nanjing elected him as the first provisional president of the Republic of China. He was inaugurated on January 1, 1912, a moment that officially established the new republic.
Robert Chancellor Nesbitt (1868-1944) was a distinguished City of London solicitor and Member of Parliament, well regarded among his contemporaries for sound advice on difficult issues. Nesbitt traveled to Shanghai in 1903 and was appointed an Advocate of the Shanghai Bar; he would therefore have been familiar with developments in China. As his handwriting on the envelope notes, he acted as a lawyer for Sun Yat-sen.
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