There were many lingua francas of which French was supposedly the first global lingua franca. That changed and it became English (from what I understand). We will probably see another language become the lingua franca, so my question is: should it be English? Are there better candidates out there? Why / why not?
If history had taken a different turn here or there. It could have easily been French or German or Dutch. In “our timeline” it happened to be the British Empire.