I would consider The Hapsburg Empire, the Spanish Empire, France, Sweden, Denmark To be major players at that point in world history. Large sections of modern Germany lost 50-60% of there population. It devastated Europe for years to come and drastically changed warfare forever.
Should the Seven Years War be seen as the 1st World War?
- Thread starter Emperor Palpatine
- Start date
I would consider The Hapsburg Empire, the Spanish Empire, France, Sweden, Denmark To be major players at that point in world history. Large sections of modern Germany lost 50-60% of there population. It devastated Europe for years to come and drastically changed warfare forever.
My reasoning is that the first period of global warfare occurred from the Seven Year's War to the defeat of Napoleon, originating as a contest between Great Britain and France.
The second period of global warfare occurred from the vernacularly known WW1 to WW2, originating as a contest between Germany and the Franco British Alliance.
Dorozhand
Banned
IF you define a World War as a war where troops from all (most?) continents fought on MORE than one continent the OTLs nomenclature is correct.
During the 7 years war Brits and French fought on other continents - even with and against native nations. BUT the difference to the later wars is that for example troops from teh Mughal empire did NOT fight in Europe or North Africa, the Indian allys of Britain and France did not leave the American theater. IF you define Australia and Oceania as ONE continent European troops did even fight in this continent (even if only a short time)
In the Great war (WWI) you got European troops fighing in Europe, Asia Africa and if you count in Coronel and Falklands even in the Americas. At the same time you have troops from the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia fighting in Europe and on other continents too. Independent states from ALL continents were involved in this war (Counting South Africa - not many other Independent states in Africa - maybe Egypt as semi Independent)
THE Napoleonic wars don't qualify IMHO opinion as the fights as troops from the other continents did not participate in European campaignes 8or campaigns outside their home continent - Russia and the OE are borderline. the War of 1815 was not really part of the Napoleonic wars, but more an Anglo American affair...
Another criteria is that in earlier wars the alliances were less formal. Only the European nations were in blocs while for example the Mughals or the Indian tribes were no formal part on the "coalitions".
But in reality ist only a matter of Definition... (US sailors pressed in UK sevice could make a case for american involvement in the Napoleonic wars and UK owned Australia
Europe is really an Asian peninsula, for long a backwater compared to the rest of the world. Tenochtitlan surpassed any contemporary European city during its time, and European cities right up to the modern era were utterly dwarfed by the cities of Tang, Song, and Ming. Europe's cities, barring Constantinople, were filthy, tiny, and unimportant. Europe's technology, culture, and military power were dwarfed by China, India, and Iran for nearly all of history up until the 18th century. Putting the army of Henry V at Agincourt up against the army of his contemporary the Yongle Emperor of Ming at the Onon would look absolutely ridiculous.
In a very real sense, predicating the definition of a world war as having Asian powers fighting in Europe grossly overstates Europe's importance and its size.
Dorozhand
Banned
I see the USSR gets no love. They did take the brunt of the fighting and did most of the winning. The Germans were never going to break the USSR and that was their downfall, destined the moment the rabid slavophobe Hitler came to power.
While you have some Points - defining continents in historical sense is different from a pure geographical definition.
Why do Europeans not consider China (India) and the like when "defining" great and world powers. Sure China (and the Mughal empire) were powerful, and maybe even richer than the different European nations, but they lacked in a deciding factor. They were too much focussed inwards - and confronted with Problems at their borders.
In the early 15th century China (zheng he) continued a policy of naval power projection, but that lapsed soon. At the same time Europe began xploration and conquest of faraway places (first the Spanish and portuguese and later Britain, the Dutch and French. It is the ability of power projection which made the European nations into "world powers" - but even that grew and I believe that until the Opium wars China could have changed that. India- well I don't know if India could have put the internal quarrels aside to throw out the Brits...
Army size - i am not too sure if the numbers of Chinese troops are accurate or are political (Propaganda) numbers - Nonetheless I agree the Yongle troops would outnumber every European army of the time considerably
OTOH during the Tumu Crisis a 500k army (well probably those numbers were inflated too) was beaten by 20k (?) Mongols. So numbers are not all that counts.