Earliest use of the term "the world war"?

Factual Questions
1

So I’m reading a biography of a pioneering Danish atheist named Georg Brandes. At one point, there’s a quote from a book he wrote in the year 1900, about how “the world war” (Danish: Verdenskrigen) has not been averted as much as it has been postponed, that it will surely come no matter what, etc.

This strikes me as a pretty damn early use of the term “the world war”. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any earlier examples, and the earliest use of the term on this Wikipedia page is from 1904 (German: Der Weltkrieg), several years after Brandes.

So what’s up with that? When did the term “the world war” first pop up? (Surely Brandes didn’t invent it, right?) And were other wars called “world wars” before WWI came along and was like “back off bitches, this one is mine”?

2

Interesting question, and one I can’t find a quick answer to. Etymonline.com has an 1898 cite:

The general context is the same as the Brandes quote you found, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find even earlier uses. Lots of people were suspicious that a peace in Europe had lasted as long as it did. And they assumed that in a modern war, their overseas colonies would be involved, either as combatants or because other nations would swoop in and try to pick them off. The imperialistic ventures of America and Japan reminded people that new players had entered the game and that every continent might be involved. Presenting the resulting conflict as a world war was a logical, inevitable, coinage. A huge genre in speculative fiction about the next world war was wildly popular until the real war started, usually with France or Germany or England battling one another but sometimes with many more countries involved. The first major one seems to be The Battle of Dorking, by George Chesney in 1871, right after the Franco-Prussian war. Maybe somebody can search them to see if the term is used.

3

Some of us are still fighting the Battle of Dorking every day.

4

I’ve heard the British-French conflict of the 18th century termed a “world war,” because the two fought wherever they met around the world. (The North American portion was the French and Indian War.) But I don’t know if anyone used the term at the time.

5

To an earlier generation ‘The Great War’ meant the struggle against Napoleon.

Colonel Repington’s book The First World War (1920) appears to be the first use of that term.

6

To title a book The First World War in 1920 shows a certain amount of pessimism.

7

I recall reading that late in life Bismarck told some younger person
something like this:

“I will not be alive when the World War begins, but you will, and it
will begin in the East.”

Bismarck died in 1898 so if the quote is accurate then the term
originated before the turn of the century, and it might well be
it was not original with Bismarck.