This year's anniversaries: both the Great War and the real First World War
This year will see the hundredth anniversary of the start of one of the worst wars in history. To my grandfather's generation who were unlucky enough to live through it, the 1914 to 1918 conflict was simply "The Great War."
My grandfather served in a front-line role in the army medical corps during that war, and was one of the lucky ones who came back. His brother was one of the millions who didn't, dying as a result of enemy action at the age of eighteen, exactly six weeks before the end of the war.
When another war on the same horrific scale broke out twenty years later, "The Great War" was no longer a unique description. Historians had to find a new naming convention, and they settled on the titles of the First and Second World Wars for the two gigantic 20th century conflagrations.
The only thing is, as The Economist points out here, there had already been several previous wars which were global in scope.
The most truly global of the conflicts prior to 1800, which is usually referred to as the Seven Years' War by British historians because that's how long fighting in Europe lasted, began 260 years ago this May. And this probably has the strongest claim to the title of the first World War even if we don't use the name.
Historians are not, sadly going to put the names on a sensible footing, any more than paleontologists are going to agree with the late Stephen Jay Gould that Brontosaurus (Thunder Lizard) is a far better name for the giant dinosaur popularly called by that name than Apatosaurus (deceptive lizard). But it would make more sense to refer to the "Seven Years War" between 1754 and 1783 (yes, that's nine years) as the First World War, to resurrect the contemporary title of "The Great War" for the 1914-1918 conflict, and rename the series of wars which ended in 1945 with the surrender of Japan after nuclear attack as either the First Nuclear War or the Second Great War.
Between May 1754 and the Treaty of Paris in 1763 there was fighting on every continent except Australia. My distant relative Lord Macauley, who considered Frederick the Great of Prussia to be mainly to blame both that war and the "War of the Austrian Succession" which preceded it, wrote of Frederick that
"In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America."
Which is not entirely fair, as the fighting in North America started in May 1754 because another figure who was to become even more famous in history, a subaltern called George Wasbington, exceeded his orders by attacking a French patrol. US historians refer to the conflict as "The Frendh and Indian War" because that is who the colonists who were to found the USA were fighting, and their conflict would probably have happened whether or not Frederick had siezed the province of Silesia, the theft for which Tom Macauley was excoriating him. But it's a great line.
And it shows how much, for good or ill, the human world has been interconnected for two and a half centuries. It is still more so today.
My grandfather served in a front-line role in the army medical corps during that war, and was one of the lucky ones who came back. His brother was one of the millions who didn't, dying as a result of enemy action at the age of eighteen, exactly six weeks before the end of the war.
When another war on the same horrific scale broke out twenty years later, "The Great War" was no longer a unique description. Historians had to find a new naming convention, and they settled on the titles of the First and Second World Wars for the two gigantic 20th century conflagrations.
The only thing is, as The Economist points out here, there had already been several previous wars which were global in scope.
The most truly global of the conflicts prior to 1800, which is usually referred to as the Seven Years' War by British historians because that's how long fighting in Europe lasted, began 260 years ago this May. And this probably has the strongest claim to the title of the first World War even if we don't use the name.
Historians are not, sadly going to put the names on a sensible footing, any more than paleontologists are going to agree with the late Stephen Jay Gould that Brontosaurus (Thunder Lizard) is a far better name for the giant dinosaur popularly called by that name than Apatosaurus (deceptive lizard). But it would make more sense to refer to the "Seven Years War" between 1754 and 1783 (yes, that's nine years) as the First World War, to resurrect the contemporary title of "The Great War" for the 1914-1918 conflict, and rename the series of wars which ended in 1945 with the surrender of Japan after nuclear attack as either the First Nuclear War or the Second Great War.
Between May 1754 and the Treaty of Paris in 1763 there was fighting on every continent except Australia. My distant relative Lord Macauley, who considered Frederick the Great of Prussia to be mainly to blame both that war and the "War of the Austrian Succession" which preceded it, wrote of Frederick that
"In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America."
Which is not entirely fair, as the fighting in North America started in May 1754 because another figure who was to become even more famous in history, a subaltern called George Wasbington, exceeded his orders by attacking a French patrol. US historians refer to the conflict as "The Frendh and Indian War" because that is who the colonists who were to found the USA were fighting, and their conflict would probably have happened whether or not Frederick had siezed the province of Silesia, the theft for which Tom Macauley was excoriating him. But it's a great line.
And it shows how much, for good or ill, the human world has been interconnected for two and a half centuries. It is still more so today.
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