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The Real First World War Was Not World War I
The war stretched from the Caribbean to Saxony to India and Africa
On July 3rd, 1754, a young military commander by the name of George Washington was forced to surrender his frontier position to a larger French force. Washington was outnumbered by more than two to one. After a sharp fight, dozens of his men had been killed or wounded. The French spread out and surrounded the meager frontier pallisade and demanded his surrender. The French were retaliating for an ambush in which Washington’s men had surprised and killed ten French soldiers, including a commander. This new force was under the command of the slain Frenchman’s brother and he insisted that George Washington had assassinated his kin. The small frontier spat did not seem out of the ordinary in the colonial era but it would blossom into something far greater.
After watching the French mass up and surround his fort, George Washington agreed to stand down. He signed an instrument of surrender for the fort and his men which supposedly had language linking Washington to an assassination. The action would unknowingly plunge the world into a war that would last nearly a decade and completely change the face of global politics forever.
The first global war, or world war, was not World War I it was the Seven Years’ War.
If a series of entangling alliances, a small conflict that erupts into something far greater than anyone expected and nearly a million dead sound familiar, it is not about World War I. Those were also features of the Seven Years’ War.
The Opening of the Seven Years’ War
The Seven Years’ War began in North America. The frontier struggle between small bands of Frenc, British and Indian soldiers soon erupted into all out war. The British and French met to try and resolve their differences in North America. The fracturous frontier was centered around modern-day Pittsburgh. The British were trying to get the French to dismantle a series of forts around the strategically important rivers and mountains of western Pennsylvania…
