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.