The Seven Years' War(i) (1754 and 1756–1763), incorporating the Pomeranian War and the French and Indian War, enveloped both European and colonial theatres. The war was described by Winston Churchill as the first world war, as it was the first conflict in human history to be fought around the globe, although most of the combatants were either European nations or their overseas colonies. It is estimated that between 900,000 and 1,400,000 people died.
This war involved all of the major European powers of the period: Prussia, Hanover, and Great Britain (including British colonies in North America, the British East India Company, and Ireland) were pitted against Austria, France (including the North American colony of New France and the French East India Company), the Russian Empire, Sweden, and Saxony. Spain and Portugal were later drawn into the conflict, and a force from the neutral Netherlands was attacked in India.
The war ended France’s power, both in the Americas (where it lost all of its possessions except French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Domingue and Saint Pierre and Miquelon) and in continental Europe, until the time of the French Revolution. Great Britain, meanwhile, emerged as the dominant colonial power in the world. The French Navy was crippled, which meant that only an ambitious rebuilding program in combination with the Spanish fleet would see it again threaten the Royal Navy's command of the sea. On the other side of the world, the British East India Company acquired the strongest position within India, which was to become the "jewel in the imperial crown". As a partially Anglo-French conflict involving developing empires, the war was one of the most significant phases of the eighteenth century Second Hundred Years' War.