Development John Browning started his work on
semi-automatic pistols in 1894, when he mostly finalized the
M1895 Colt–Browning machine gun. He initially tried to use the same gas action with a swinging piston, with a prototype ready to be shown to
Colt in July 1895, and applied for a patent in September 1895. Although this experimental pistol did not progress further, its general layout and
fire control group design were reused in three other designs he developed in the following year. Patents for them were filed in October 1896, and two out of three later became
Colt M1900 and FN M1900. Browning licensed the rights to produce and sell them to Colt within the US and Canada in July 1896, but it's believed at the time Colt was mainly protecting its revolver market. or 1897 Browning also scaled the .38 blowback pistol down to .32 caliber to use as a
pocket pistol. According to a widespread legend, FN sent their sales manager
Hart O. Berg to
Hartford, where he had previously worked, to investigate advances in bicycle design introduced by the
Pope Manufacturing Company. In 1896, most of their primary shareholders left and a major competitor,
DWM,
took over a controlling stake, excluding the company from the export market for military firearms and forcing it to diversify into sporting firearms, their parts, and even bicycles.
Production Serial production started in January 1899, but the M1899 nomenclature postdates it. FN originally called M1899 "modele de présérie",(pre-production model) approximately 14,400 of them were made in total. In 1900, driven by feedback from the Belgian military, FN introduced what was later called M1900, an improved design based on the M1899. These designations were applied retroactively after FN began manufacture of other Browning pistol designs; initially the M1900 was marketed as simply the "
Pistolet Browning" (Browning Pistol). A shorter barrel reduced the overall length by less than a millimeter while maintaining the same caliber and magazine capacity. The grip plates were made 1 mm wider, offering a more comfortable and secure hold for shooters with larger hands.
Eugen Schauman, a Finnish nationalist activist,
assassinated the Governor-General
Nikolay Bobrikov (the highest Russian authority in the
Grand Duchy of Finland) with a Browning pistol in
Helsinki on June 16, 1904. The act was followed by spontaneous anti-Russian celebrations in the streets of Helsinki and after the
1917 independence Schauman was considered to be a national hero of Finland.
An Jung-geun, a Korean-independence activist, assassinated the 1st Prime Minister of Japan and Resident-General of Korea
Itō Hirobumi with this type of gun on October 26, 1909, in
Harbin railway station. According to Seo Sung-woo, a former Republic of Korea Army Sergeant and gun enthusiast, Pyongyang holds the pistol in high regard as it was used to take out Hirobumi. Socialist revolutionary
Fanny Kaplan also used a FN M1900 in her attempted assassination of Lenin on August 30, 1918.
Abelardo Mendoza Leyva, a militant of the Peruvian left-wing
APRA party, is also reported to have used an FN1900 to assassinate
President Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro in
Lima, on April 30, 1933. The pistol was popular in China from its introduction through
World War II and was often copied and used as the basis for other designs. State-run arsenals produced serialized production runs for warlord militias, and local craftsmen produced one-off handmade versions. It is likely that this model is the one used by Fifth Officer
Harold Lowe during the sinking of the Titanic, though it is also possible that it was a 1910 model. ==Variants==