World War VII

[AH Sarmiento]

>At 11:11 AM 7/24/97 GMT, Mike Weaver wrote:
>
>>A curious question I'm confident one of you will be able to answer.  Here
>>follows a statement from the intro to a book,  Will Germany Crack,  by Paul
>>Hagen,  publ in US 1942,  UK 1943.
>>
>>"...the last war (World War VII according to the now fashionable
>>nomenclature,  though it is probably hopeless to try to persuade most
>>Americans that it was not World War I.)"
>>
>>Okay foax,   what were the first six and what was the criteria used?
>> I've got a bet with myself who will be first to answer it.  Will I win?
>>
>>Easy as you go
>>
>>Mike
>>
>
A modest proposal: As WWI was not, in the strictest sense, a 'World War'
(how many continents witnessed actual fighting?), I suppose Mr Hagen to
mean a massive Eurocentric conflict that, perhaps by necessity, engages
other parts of the globe (ie, colonies) in some, at least, peripheral
manner. Two powers duking it out doesn't work (no Franco-Prussian War); two
alliances, and satellites, I think, does. Given, too that Mr Hagen
published in 1942, I proceed among the assumption that he means only
Eurocentric wars, not "whole Known World wars," such as those of
Alexandrian ilk.

That said, and without a history book available, I humbly submit:
6. The Napoleonic Wars (w/War of 1812)
5. The Seven Years War (aka French and Indian War)
4. The War of Austrain Succession
3. The War of Spanish Succession (I admit my recollection of these two is
verry skitch, but one of them involved Jenkins Ear, ¿no?)
2. The Thirty Years War

(And that's the best I can do. If  I had a book by me, I'd check up on the
Ottoman Wars, my main suspect for #1, involving that extra-European power.
And I admit that the Thrity Years War doesn't quite fit my criterion well.
And I also admit the possibility of a "Known World" Definition that might
be more suited to Alexander, the Mongol Invasions of Asia, the Muslim
Invasions of N Africa and Byzantium, The Crusades, and the Julian/Augustan
Roman Exapansions. So chew on it)









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Tony Sarmiento
607.277.8329
ahs2 at cornell.edu
www.museum.cornell.edu