Shanghai massacre in the context of "Nanchang uprising"

The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT) against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The purpose of the campaign was to reunify China, which had become fragmented in the aftermath of the 1911 Revolution. The expedition was led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, and was divided into two phases. The first phase ended in a 1927 political split between two factions of the KMT: the right-leaning Nanjing faction, led by Chiang, and the left-leaning faction in Wuhan, led by Wang Jingwei. The split was partially motivated by Chiang's Shanghai Massacre of Communists within the KMT, which marked the end of the First United Front. In an effort to mend this schism, Chiang Kai-shek stepped down as the commander of the NRA in August 1927, and went into exile in Japan.

The second phase of the Expedition began in January 1928, when Chiang resumed command. By April 1928, the nationalist forces had advanced to the Yellow River. With the assistance of allied warlords, including Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang, the nationalist forces secured a series of decisive victories against the Beiyang Army. As they approached Beijing, Zhang Zuolin, leader of the Manchuria-based Fengtian clique, was forced to flee and was later assassinated shortly thereafter by the Japanese. His son, Zhang Xueliang, took over as the leader of the Fengtian clique, and in December 1928, announced that Manchuria would accept the authority of the nationalist government in Nanjing. With the final piece of China under KMT control, the Northern Expedition concluded successfully and China was reunified, heralding the start of the Nanjing decade.

The Chinese Communist Revolution was a social and political revolution in mainland China that began in 1927 and culminated with the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. The revolution was led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which afterwards became the ruling party of China. The political revolution resulted in major social changes within China and has been looked at as a model by revolutionary communist movements in other countries.

During the preceding century, termed the century of humiliation, the decline of the Qing dynasty and the rise of foreign imperialism caused escalating social, economic, and political problems in China. The Qing collapsed in 1912 and were replaced with the Republic of China, which had itself fallen into warring factions by 1917. A small group of urban intellectuals, inspired by the October Revolution and European socialist ideas, founded the CCP in 1921. They created an alliance known as the First United Front with the much larger Kuomintang (KMT), having the shared goal of overthrowing the warlords governing China. During this period the CCP rapidly expanded its membership, organized a militant labor movement in several of China's major cities, and established rudimentary peasant associations in rural areas. Nonetheless, and despite the First United Front's military successes, KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek ended the alliance in 1927 by initiating the Shanghai massacre.

The Wuhan Nationalist government (Chinese: 武漢國民政府), also known as the Wuhan government, Wuhan regime, or Hankow government, was a government dominated by the left-wing of the Nationalist or Kuomintang (KMT) Party of China that was based in Wuhan from 5 December 1926 to 21 September 1927, led first by Eugene Chen, and later by Wang Jingwei.

Following the capture of Wuhan during the Northern Expedition, the Nationalist government based in Guangzhou moved there in December 1926. In April 1927, after National Revolutionary Army (NRA) commander-in-chief Chiang Kai-shek purged communists and leftists in the "Shanghai massacre", the Wuhan government split with Chiang in what is known as the "Nanjing–Wuhan split" (Chinese: 寧漢分裂). Chiang subsequently formed his own government in Nanjing. While Chiang continued the Northern Expedition on his own, increasing tensions between communists and the KMT in the Wuhan government resulted in a new purge of communists from that government, and an eventual reconciliation with the Nanjing faction, after which the government moved to Nanjing.

Georges André Malraux (/mælˈroʊ/ mal-ROH; French: [ʒɔʁʒ ɑ̃dʁe malʁo]; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, member of the French Resistance, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate) (1933) is set during the 1927 Shanghai uprising and won the Prix Goncourt; L'Espoir (Man's Hope, 1937) arose from his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. After the Second World War he abandoned fiction and wrote several works on art history, collected as La Psychologie de l'Art (The Voices of Silence, 1953). He was appointed by President Charles de Gaulle as information minister (1945–46) and subsequently as France's first cultural affairs minister during de Gaulle's presidency (1959–1969).

Man's Fate (French: La Condition humaine, "The Human Condition") is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux about the failed communist insurrection and resultant massacre in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associated with the revolution. Along with Les Conquérants (1928 – "The Conquerors") and La Voie Royale (1930 – "The Royal Way"), it forms a trilogy on revolution in Asia.

The novel was translated into English twice, both translations appearing in 1934, one by Haakon Chevalier under the title Man's Fate, published by Harrison Smith & Robert Haas in New York and republished by Random House as part of their Modern Library from 1936 on, and the other by Alastair MacDonald under the title Storm in Shanghai, published by Methuen in London and republished, still by Methuen, in 1948 as Man's Estate, to become a Penguin pocket in 1961. Currently the Chevalier translation is the only one still in regular print.