In the study of history you run across a lot of wars. There are many worthy of study, such as: Peloponnesian War, the Punic wars, the war of the Roses, the Revolutionary war, and so on… I’ve always wondered what they were called in their day, and more notably, of the names have changed, why? And who did this?
WWI was called the Great War until…1938? The fact that it was called the great war is plausible, in that it was the largest war up to that time, but was it so large (when compared to previous wars) that it deserved the sobriquet “great war’, or World War One, when compared to all of the previous wars?
So, here is what has been bothering me (OK, obviously it hasn’t bothered me THAT much, but anyways…) for a long time. WWI took place in many locations on earth, with battles in the continent of Europe, parts of Asia, fewer parts of Africa, and so on. This war involved almost all of the modern powers in conflict. IF this is the justification for calling this human conflagration a ‘world war’, then why haven’t the Napoleonic Wars been called WWI?
Obviously, nitpicking like this doesn’t change the real facts associated with either of these conflicts. On the other hand, this sort of ‘revisionism’ has been on the rise in the world of historians, and for me this would be merely changing some names to keep a sense of consistency, versus some grand doctrinal axe to grind.
These wars, taking place in the early 19th century covered just as much territory in Europe, many of the same places in Asia (Egypt, for instance), and since both Great Britain and Napoleonic France were colonial powers, all of their ‘holdings’ were involved in one way or another. The war of 1812 could be seen as a subset in this grander piece of global mayhem. There were battles in South America, in the Indian Ocean, and almost all of the then modern world powers were engaged in this conflict.
To me, this sounds more similar to WWI than to any of the wars that preceded Napoleon. In any case, there are some subsidiary points which might be of interest of this change of nomenclature. With the simple change of a name, what many students of history consider to be the modern age would have to be moved nearly a century further back in time. It would force us to re-evaluate what these times meant in a different light. I think that this would be a worthwhile endeavor since these sorts of appellations are pretty arbitrary, and consequently, this would summon a fresh breeze through many hidebound notions predicated (as I have already stated) upon some rather subjective, arbitrary ground.
Another one of the potential impacts of enacting this change in ‘name’ would be that Napoleon would lose his “free pass” in history. I think that this important historical figure has been relinquished to a ‘further part’ and as such is not evaluated as a comparable modern equivalent. The fact is, that outside of France, at least on the European continent, he was considered to be somewhat of the Antichrist.
In a modern re-evaluation he would be more to be likely compared to a Hitler versus a Julius Caesar…
