re: What has had more impact on history: war, trade, or disease?

Without trade or the desire to gain more of something there would have been far less motivation for wars and disease would not have been as widespread.

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Without trade or the desire to gain more of something

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Meh - I think this is poor analysis - no question that desire and greed have triggered a number of wars, but I think it is clear that nations that have well-established trading relationships with each other rarely go to war - and if they do, they anguish over the impact of the war on that trade.

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War easy

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Do you realize how many people have been annihilated from disease? Entire populations, significant leaders/kings, etc.

It might be war, but its not "easy".

The black death/plague took out 75-200 million people. 30-60% of Europe's population. Some say it reduced the world's population by 350-400 million.

And that's just one pandemic.

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What has had more impact on history: war, trade, or disease?

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These things tend to go hand-in-hand so it is difficult to separate them. For example, trade involves the movement of people, and the movement of people facilitates the spread of disease. Trade is also a primary motivation for war, which of course, promotes the spread of disease.

If you define "historical impact" as "historical change," the answer is either disease or war.

Trade could be considered to be the most stabilizing force in history. Stabilization is the antithesis to change. Analytically, we would therefore say that trade has a negative direct effect on "historical change."

Trade also causes disease and war. Disease and war cause historical change. Thus, trade has a positive indirect effect on historical change through disease and war.

However, it is possible that this positive indirect effect is actually outweighed by the negative direct effect, so that trade has a net stabilizing influence despite the fact that it causes both disease and war.

The conclusion in such a scenario would be that disease and war have a bigger impact on historical change than trade.

Religion

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Trade

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But as I have illustrated, trade contributes to both stabilization and change. If one thinks of "impact" in terms of change, this means trade has a negative effect on change. If one thinks of "impact" in terms of magnitude of effects (positive or negative), the effects of trade probably wash out, to a certain extent. Either way, I'm going with war and/or disease. Probably disease.

The REALLY interesting part, of course, is whether historical change leads to trade. I would suggest that it does. Thus, the entire exercise suffers from a problem of endogeneity.

Disease. Specifically, the Mosquito. The diseases that they carry have killed something like 1 in 3 people who have ever lived. Without them, our population would be more out of control than it is now, especially in the Third World.

War.

War, rebellion, and revolution are what shape nations and governments, and occupation and administration of conquered territories caused/causes population assimilation. War can either bolster economies (America in WWI) or collapse them (most of Europe after WWI), and it has led to myriad technological advancements. Throughout history, most leaders were military dictators, victors, or people whose views and outlook were shaped by war.

Without the American Revolution you don't get the United States. Without the Russian Revolution and resulting Civil War there's no Soviet Union. Both World Wars literally redrew the map of most of the globe.

And that's just within the last 250 years.