Plausibility Check: World War I before the 20th Century

If it possible for World War I to break out at least 15 years before it did? If not, how early can it break out?

Do you mean the WW1 with basically the same alliance structures or just any war involving all or most of the major powers and fought on a global stage? As others have noted there were several wars fought before 1900 that could legitimately be called World Wars.
 

Delta Force

Banned
That brings up a question: why was the upcoming World War I seen as so different? Was it purely the technology?

There's the scale of the conflict, its massive expense in lives and funding (so much that it destabilized and eventually collapsed the specie currency standard), the larger scale of the secondary battles (fought in Africa, East Asia, the Middle East, the Atlantic and Pacific, and even off South America), and the fact that the war could be reported on "live" as it occurred (or at least in the morning and evening papers) due to the transoceanic telegraphy system.
 
As far as I am concerned that is World War I for me, the Napolonic Wars WW 2, the 1914-1918 conflict WW 3 and the 1939-1945 is WW 4

World War I - Seven Years War
World War II - America and Alies win
World War III - Alies and Soviet win
World War IV - The Cold War

hm why 9 years war called 7 years war?
 
World War I - Seven Years War
World War II - America and Alies win
World War III - Alies and Soviet win
World War IV - The Cold War

hm why 9 years war called 7 years war?

The state of declared war between the powers involved in the Seven Years' War only lasted seven years. However, the localized conflicts (known as the French and Indian War) that merged into the Seven Years' War had started two years before.

EDIT: On topic, I think that there were a number of crises which we could say might have broken out into a full-scale world war - Fashoda has already been mentioned, but it was far from the only similar incident between great powers in the run-up to World War I, and in the nineteenth century. The difficulty is in getting the alliance system to crystallize more clearly early, so that one of these incidents triggers a great war. The number of times the balance of power shifted in the alliances between these power post-Franco-Prussian War, it could look completely different from the war as it happened IOTL.
 
Last edited:

Dorozhand

Banned
The Seven Years War had extensive and highly important fronts on three continents with some fighting off the coast of a fourth. It involved most of the major powers of the time.

The First World War was actually less of a world war than the Seven Years War. While it did involve most of the world's major powers, the vast majority of the important fighting took place in Europe, with only minor, one-sided side-shows in Africa and Asia.
 
Top