World War - World Wars Before The 20th Century

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.

Read more about this topic:  World War

Famous quotes containing the words world and/or wars:

    “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
    —Karl Marx (1818–1883)

    “I had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children’s homes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world.”
    —Norman Mailer (b. 1923)