Between Two Wars. Two world wars serve to frame the historical era between 1750 and 1914: the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), whose American component was the French and Indian War (1754-1763), and the "Great War," now known as World War I (1914-1918). In the Seven Years' War, the dynastic aims of eighteenth-century European monarchs intertwined with their ambitions for colonial and maritime dominance to spark a conflict that occupied Europeans worldwide. That war, however, had specific territorial objects and did not target civilian populations. Furthermore, it was fought with weapons lacking the lethal power of those used in World War I. This conflict among industrialized states was fought on land by huge armies outfitted with machine guns, tanks, large artillery pieces, biplanes, and mustard gas, and at sea by submarines and fleets of steel-clad, coal- and oil-powered battleships. It was a total war with significant numbers of civilian casualties. Eighteenth-century...