THE world—or, at least, those parts of it that participated in the original events—has recently been taking great interest in the first world war. Its almost casual beginning, between June 28th 1914, when the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary was assassinated by a Bosnian nationalist, and the first days of August, when Germany declared war on Russia and France, drawing in their ally Britain, has fascinated historians. And the horrors that followed have fascinated everyone, though in a rather different way. But does the conflict deserve its title? It was undoubtedly a world war. But it was certainly not the first. That laurel belongs to a war that broke out 160 years earlier, in 1754, and carried on until 1763. Fighting did not start in Europe until 1756, which is why the conflict is known as the Seven Years’ War in that part of the world. But it was truly global. Every inhabited continent except Australia saw fighting on its soil, and independent powers on three of those continents were active participants. The first action of this first global conflict involved a young officer with a familiar name, who went on to greater things. On May 28th 1754, a small group of soldiers from the British colony of Virginia, under the command of George Washington, engaged a group of French troops who were interloping from New France (ie, Canada) into territory the British considered theirs. Instead of peacefully repelling them as he had been instructed, Washington ended up killing several of them, including their commanding officer. The conflict in North America then continued, with both sides fighting in alliance with local native American nations. Two years later, Britain’s ally Prussia attacked the small German state of Saxony, bringing Saxony’s ally Austria, and thus Austria’s ally France (and therefore France’s enemy and Prussia’s ally, Britain), into the conflict on European soil. It is a sequence of events eerily similar to the domino effect by which an attack in 1914 by Germany’s ally Austria on the small Balkan state of Serbia brought in Serbia’s ally Russia, which then threatened Germany, which then declared war on both Russia and Russia’s ally France.

The war rapidly globalised. Both Britain and France reinforced their colonial troops in North America, and started attacking each other’s colonies in the West Indies and trading stations in Africa and India. In India, some of the princely states which had recently emerged from the dying Mughal empire also got involved, and Britain ended up taking over one of them, Bengal. The war came to South America when, near its end, Spain joined the French side and attacked one of the American colonies of Britain’s ally, Portugal.

Like the first world war, this global conflict reshaped the globe. Indeed, it is the reason why the modern world is an English-speaking one. As a colonial power, France was destroyed, and did not return seriously to the business of overseas conquest until it attacked Algeria in 1830. All of North America east of the Mississippi became British, save the city of New Orleans, which became Spanish. And the foundations of British rule in India were laid as well. As for George Washington, he ended up leading a rebel army of North American colonists who decided that they would rather go it alone. The conflict he started in 1754 was the first true world war, though it is not generally referred to as such; but you can see why some historians like to call it World War Zero.

Dig deeper:

Learning from the first president (June 2013)

A century on, there are uncomfortable parallels with 1914 (December 2013)

Europe's commemorations could end a 100-year haunting (November 2013)

Update: This blog post has been amended to remove the news peg.