The FN Browning M1900 (known at the time in Europe just as Browning pistol) is a single action semi-automatic pistol designed c. 1896 by John Browning for Fabrique Nationale de Herstal (FN) and produced in Belgium at the turn of the 20th century. It was the first production handgun to use a slide.

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. All four prototypes were chambered in .38 caliber and are currently exhibited at the Browning Firearms Museum in Ogden, Utah. 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. In 1896 or 1897 Browning also scaled the .38 blowback pistol down to .32 caliber to use as a pocket pistol.

According to a widespread legend, in April 1897 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. There, he supposedly accidentally met John Browning and persuaded him to have his pistol manufactured at FN by telling him the story of a modern factory with nothing to produce.

Despite state-of-the-art manufacturing capabilities, by the end of 1895 FN was in poor financial shape due to a lack of orders on their M1889 rifles and a lost legal battle with Mauser over the rights to produce improved M1893s. 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.

However, documents from Browning's later legal dispute with Georg Luger tell a different story. In 1896-1897 Berg, who was acquainted with Browning due to their joint work on the Colt machine gun in 1893–1894, persuaded him in correspondence to visit Liège with his pistol designs, which he did in April 1897. FN managers were impressed by the design's reliability and simplicity (it's unclear from secondary sources if it was already in .32 or still in .38) which were uncommon in those early days of semi-automatic guns. Afterward, Berg and Browning traveled to Berlin and showed a locked-breech and a blowback pistol to Hugo Borchardt to obtain approval from DWM.

Berg presented a draft of the license agreement to the FN board in June 1897 and then traveled to Hartford to finalize it with John and Matt Brownings in July 1897. The agreement granted FN the rights to manufacture and sell what became the M1899 in France, Belgium, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Spain. In 1898 Berg was unsuccessful in attempting to persuade Browning to supervise the pistol's production in Belgium, but its manufacture by FN transformed the fortunes of that company and laid the foundation for its long-term relationship with Browning (who died on FN's premises in 1924).

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.