Ask a Teacher

Search



WICH ARS THE WARS
War is an organised and often prolonged armed conflict that is carried out by states or non-state actors. It is characterised by extreme violence, social disruption, and economic destruction.

A world war is a war affecting most of the world's most powerful and populous countries. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theaters.

The term is usually applied to the two conflicts of unprecedented scale that occurred during the 20th century: World War I (1914–1918) and World War II (1939–1945). However, it is also sometimes applied to earlier wars and to a hypothetical future war.

World wars before the 20th century

Before the 20th century, there were a number of wars spanning multiple continents, including:

    the Greco–Persian Wars (499 B.C. — 449 B.C.)
    the Wars of Alexander the Great (335 B.C. — 323 B.C.)
    the Wars of the Diadochi (322 B.C. — 275 B.C.)
    the First Punic War (264 B.C. — 241 B.C.)
    the Second Punic War (218 B.C. — 201 B.C.)
    the Roman–Syrian War (192 B.C. — 188 B.C.)
    the Roman–Persian Wars (92 B.C. — 629 A.D.)
    the First Mithridatic War (89 B.C. — 85 B.C.)
    the Byzantine–Sassanid wars (502 A.D. — 628 A.D.)
    the Arab–Byzantine wars (629 A.D. — 1050s A.D.)
    the Second Crusade (1145 A.D. — 1149 A.D.)
    the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars (1265 A.D. — 1479 A.D.)
    the Eighty Years' War (1568 A.D. — 1648 A.D.)
    the Dutch–Portuguese War (1602 A.D. — 1663 A.D.)
    the Nine Years' War (1688 A.D. — 1697 A.D.), also called the "War of the Grand Alliance" or "War of the Palatine Succession"
    the War of the Spanish Succession (1701 A.D. — 1714 A.D.)
    the War of the Austrian Succession (1740 A.D. — 1748 A.D.)
    the Seven Years' War (1754 A.D. — 1763 A.D.), which Winston Churchill called "the first world war" in A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
    the American Revolutionary War (1775 A.D. — 1783 A.D.)
    the French Revolutionary Wars (1792 A.D. — 1802 A.D.)
    the Napoleonic Wars (1803 A.D. — 1815 A.D.)
    the Crimean War (1853 A.D. — 1856 A.D.)
    the Spanish–American War (1898 A.D.)

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.


comments powered by Disqus