MARTIN SUGARMAN
The Shanghai Volunteer Corps (SVC) was set up in 1853 as a voluntary international militia by various European countries, including Russia, Japan and the USA, to protect their foreign-trade missions from the frequent local civil wars and general disorder in Shanghai during the nine The 19th and early 20th centuries.
At one time, the SVC had volunteers of more than twenty different nationalities. It was usually mobilized in response to riots or to augment regular foreign garrisons in the city (a strategic reserve) or to form expeditionary forces, such as during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. For most of its existence, the force was funded by the Shanghai Municipal Council, but volunteers received no pay, with the exception of the professional White Russian Company.
It comprised at its peak twenty-three different units, among them Light Horse, Artillery and Air Defense, as well as national units such as Portuguese and Chinese. These included, from 1932, a Jewish Company.1 The SVC's peak strength in the late 1930s was 2,300 men. Its longest mobilization was in August 1937 during the Sino-Japanese War.
The Japanese had surrounded the city from 1932, and the SVC's task was to keep them out and to help patrol the entry points facing the Japanese forces. When the British formally withdrew in 1940, and the SVC took permanent control of the so-called International Settlement, the area within the city where the foreign residents lived and mostly worked.
The SVC was finally disbanded by the Japanese occupation forces in early 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The last, albeit unofficial, reunion of the SVC was for the centenary celebrations in April 1954, held in Hong Kong at the Royal Yacht Club.
Source:https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Shanghai_Corps.pdf
A beautiful Example of the Rare Shanghai Municipal Council Emergency Medal 1937:
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With thanks to "Flying Tiger Antiques"
https://www.flyingtigerantiques.com