I’ve always wondered this. The 7 Years war was fought on multiple continents and decided the world as we know it, just like both World Wars. I just don’t get why it wasn’t seen as a world war and I came here to ask why.
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Convention.
The ‘World Wars’ only became World Wars after the 2nd ended.
To be more useful both World Wars could be referred to as a Second Thirty Years’ War instead — which they have been by various people over the years.
e. Very important: “The Second Thirty Years War” is not in any way to say that the entire course of those thirty years was inevitable. Rather, it’s a way to invite context and analysis of the sequence of events from the outbreak of WW1 (honestly probably further back to the Balkan Wars or the Russo-Japanese War) until the conclusion of WW2 (again, you could extend this to the conclusion of the Chinese civil war).
The throughline tension of the first half of the 20th century is that of the new imperial powers and their place among the existing old power structures. In Europe, Germany and Italy, in Asia, Japan. Those tensions gave rise to the series of conflicts in that time period, but the course of history was *not* deterministic and the particular sequences of events that occurred were only one possible outcome of those central tensions.
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