Has there ever been anything like the oil boom we see today?

For more than thousand of years the Middle Asia and some neighbouring regions got profits from the Silk Way from China to Europe. It worked practically until Vasco Da Gama. As for longevity of the source of free money, interesting people and ideas, I think, it was the record.

As for gold/silver rushes, they brought inflation, too, and were not so useful. The industry appearing around them was scarce.

Manaus cauchuc rush was, I think, the most sad case - when an industry appeared... and disappeared before eyes of one generation.

The most radical example, with the greatest difference with and without the resource, I think, was Nauru - where the whole island/state was digged off.

California was an interesting example, where one rush (gold) switched to another, more soft one (whales).

The coming together of coal, iron/steelmaking and the invention of the steam engine in pre-Victorian Britain produced the first wave of cheap energy.

While not very far ahead of other European countries, leading the wave seems to be instrumental in transforming just another European colonial power to the first global (admittedly short lived) Empire.

Cheap power provided the means to process goods in factories, as well as to streamline transport and trade in those goods (even though much bulk transport remained under sail), as well as to dominate and control the trade routes with naval power.

As other countries could catch up reasonably quickly, and steam was surpassed by other technologies, it didn't last very long.

One example of a region that became wealthy and powerful after a single event was California, whose Gold Rush directly and indirectly increased the population of the state by an order of magnitude.

Peru's Guano Era comes to mind. Within about 2 decades, it economy boomed. However, as the guano ran out, a diversification into saltpeter did not work out so well, and the lost war with Chile dropped Peru back to its pre-Guano economic situation.

I would posit that such booms and rushes are not the exception but the norm, and there is more to be learned from the study of them than from mere war and politics. The effects of the latter are comparatively easily (and often, quickly) reversed, while the effects of booms and rushes usually reverberate for generations.

Some examples:

• Bananas. Today we take for granted the availability of fresh fruit in the marketplace, so it's hard to imagine what the introduction of the banana to the diet of the rapidly urbanizing USA meant. But the effect of the rapid development of the industry in tropical economies are still felt today, both politically and economically.

• Meat. Argentina rose from obscurity to one of the richest countries in the world, while Chicago became one of the world's great cities in hardly more than a generation - all because the discovery that it was possible to ship meat to Europe in ice-cooled ships.

• Slaves. Of course.

• Furs. If Beijing wasn't so damned cold, it seems unlikely that Russian would have found their way through Alaska to as far as California, but such was the market for furs there.

• Opium. British rule in India can't be understood without reference to the boom in opium exports to China. It can be argued that no other commodity in history had a greater effect, politically and economically, on more people than this one item, which took less than 20 years to develop but centuries to undo its harm.

• Silver. As noted by others.

• Grain. Supplying grain to Rome was first the source of great wealth for Sardinia, Corsica, and other provinces, and later their ruin as their soils degraded, their market diminished, and their competition bested them.

• Consumer Electronics. If the Pearl River Delta was an independent country, we'd certainly talk about the boom there in the same terms as the oil boom in the Persian Gulf. And the geopolitical ramifications are similar in magnitude.

The list goes on and on and it's a very worthwhile area of study. One of the fundamental questions of economics is the extent to which global economic growth is driven by this sort of exogenous exploitation, as opposed to internal growth and invention. Obviously this question is intertwined with serious moral and political issues.

Sugar cane in the Caribbean comes to mind. The islands were sporting single purpose economies for all practical intents, much like a number of OPEC countries do.

It was extremely valuable, too. In the aftermath of the 7 years war, France preferred to give up its Canadian possessions to keep Guadeloupe and Martinique.

The parallel extends somewhat in that sugar cane's importance declined after sugar beet became widespread, leaving many an island without much of an economy.