According to Wikipedia the term "World War I" was coined by Time magazine on page 28b of its June 12, 1939 issue. In the same article, on page 32, the term "World War II" was first used speculatively to describe the upcoming war. The first use for the actual war came in its issue of September 11, 1939.
The reason why the Great War of 1914-18 and the ensuing war of 1939-45 were labelled 'world wars' was because they really did involve nations from every continent, including soldiers drafted from European colonies in Africa and Asia and units from former British colonies like Australia and New Zealand.
Before June 12, 1939 everyone called WW1 of 1914-1918 -
the Great War.
Coining the term WW1 for the Great War was wrong, because in fact the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) was the actual World War I. It was fought by European powers of the time on five continents. Battles were fought in many parts of Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean isles, the Philippines, and coastal Africa. This map shows the scale of the conflict, with the blue team representing Great Britain, Prussia, Portugal with their allies and the green team France, Spain, Austria, Russia, Sweden and their allies (including the Mughal Empire, the Bengal Sultanate and Native American tribes involved on both sides, although the Mughal Empire isn't shown on the map):
The terms First and Second World Wars were not coined by historians but by journalists. I believe that this should be rectified and that the term World War I should be applied to the Seven Years' War. World War II to the Great War. World War III to the 1939-1945 War. Historians should redefine what journalists got wrong.
And perhaps the term World War IV could be applied to the Cold War.
Therefore, if the current Russian-Ukrainian war escalates into another World War, it will be World War V already (or at least World War IV).
The Napoleonic Wars were fought almost exclusively in Europe, so we don't have to call them a World War, although there were battles also e.g. in Egypt.
However, if we decide to count also the Napoleonic Wars, it will look like this:
World War I (1756-1763)
World War II (1803-1815)
World War III (1914-1918)
World War IV (1939-1945)
And then the Cold War.
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