World Wars Before The 20th Century
Before the 20th century, there were a number of wars spanning multiple continents, including:
- the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648)
- the Dutch-Portuguese War (1602-1663)
- the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), also called the "War of the Grand Alliance" or "War of the Palatine Succession"
- the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714)
- the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748)
- the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), which Winston Churchill called "the first world war" in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
- the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783)
- the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and
- the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815)
Before the late 19th century, the concept of a world war would be the result of military action caused by quarrels between European powers which took place in fairly limited, though sometimes far-flung, theaters of conflict.
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