Download (28Mb) - LSE Theses Online

seems to be the logie behind the long stalled UN sponsored Confidence Building
Measures (CBM's). These advocated the initial steps of a process of German reunification
in reverse, though in a climate of mutual hostility. The CBM's offered
the possibility of some mutuai benefits from currently dereliet and abandoned
infrastructure, some mutuai trade, some re-integration; they did not attempi to lay
the foundations for the création of a unitary Cypriot state. However, even the
former has proved too ambitious.
Perhaps war in Cyprus accentuated changes already occurring in the social and
economic life of the island (though much Greek-Cypriot opinion argues the
reverse). Urbanisation, which had been accelerating in the twenty years prior to
1974 92 , experienced an immediate upward shift (in the Republic of Cyprus) as the
overwhelmingly rural population from the north was displaced south. This was
consistent with the decline in significance of the primary sector (both in terms of
GDP contribution and as a major employer) and the subsequent meteoric rise of
services, after the brief but seemingly cruciai manufacturing boom of the late 1970s
(see Chapter 5). Generally, the literature on recent Cypriot economic history is
sparse and not comparative, missing interesting questions. This thesis attempts to
examine the economic conséquences of systematic and sustained organised violence
92 Between 1960 - 1974 the urban population grew by 31 %, over the same period the rural population
grew by only 0.4% (Pearce R. 1981. "Part-Time Farming in Cyprus", University of Reading , Dept.
of Agricultural Economies & Management, Development Study No. 21).
59