Thanks for that info. I was just talking with my kids about World War I, and quipped that I wonder if the Revolutionary War might have been close to being considered a “world war”.
Then they asked about the Civil War, and I told them I didn’t think there was much involvement by other countries.
You should tell your kids that our Revolutionary War fell between the First World War and the Second World War, and then explain that historians consider the Seven Years War (1756 to 1763 our "French and Indian War") to be the true "First World-Wide War."
The Second World-Wide War was the Napoleonic War of 1803 through 1815, including our War of 1812.
These First and Second World-wide wars saw Britain and Germany allied against France.
That makes the two great 20th century wars World Wars Three (1914 to 1918) and Four (1939 to 1945), with Britain, France, Russia and the USA allied against Germany.
Then we could call the Cold War World War Five (1946 to 1991),
and now the War on Terror, World War Six -- except that by now words have lost all meanings, there is no "war" it's just "overseas contingency operations" against "workplace violence"... sort of, I think.
Of course, hopefully your kids are home-schooled, otherwise government teachers may not smile so kindly at their precociousness. ;-)
The fact that the War of the American Revolution spread far beyond the US is widely overlooked. Battles were fought in Spain, the Caribbean, off the coast of Africa and in India. How many Americans could tell you that the last battle of the war was the Battle of Cuddalore, fought in India?
I have looked through the indexes of many books on the war for references to the Battle of Pensacola, aka Fort George, in 1782 but have often come up empty. Although it was a significant battle, it was fought between British and Spanish troops, with no US forces involved.