The use of the phrase as an overarching category indicates the interrelation of all the wars as components of the rivalry between France and Britain for world power.

Great Britain was not a single state until 1707, prior to which it was the separate kingdoms of England and Scotland, albeit with a shared Crown and military establishment.

The Stuarts had sought friendly terms with Louis XIV: James I and Charles I, both Protestants, had avoided involvement as much as possible in the Thirty Years' War, while Charles II and the Catholic convert James II had even actively supported Louis XIV in his War against the Dutch Republic.

William III, however, sought to oppose Louis XIV's Catholic regime and styled himself as a Protestant champion.

Tensions continued in the following decades, during which France protected and supported Jacobites who sought to overthrow the later Stuarts and, after 1715, the Hanoverians.

The outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars led to a renewed period of conflict between Britain and France, the latter now under the control of a republican government.