Houssine Alloul is an Assistant Professor of Modern Global History at the University of Amsterdam. He specializes in international history with a focus on Modern Europe and the Late Ottoman Empire. Prior to coming to UvA, he was an FWO visiting fellow at Boğaziçi University, a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University, and a junior research fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz. He obtained his PhD in History from the University of Antwerp. For his dissertation he examined the relations between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Ottoman Empire, looking in particular at how small power diplomacy, the global expansion of Belgian capital and transnational sociabilities interlaced. Expanding on this thesis, he is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled The Business of Diplomacy: Small States and the Ottoman World in An Age of Capital.
He is also preparing (with Michael Auwers, CegeSoma) an annotated English translation and critical edition of the future king Leopold II’s 1864-65 diaries of his voyage through British-occupied India, Penang, Singapore and Hong Kong. Other ongoing projects include an article-length study of Leopold’s lifetime ‘fixation’ (speculative/Orientalist/imperialist) with the Ottoman lands, as well as a comparative, cultural and social history of Ottoman diplomats in Europe in the period 1834-1914.
Key publications
His publications can be accessed through Academia.edu.
Other interests
Finance capitalism, consular history, (post-)Ottoman diasporas in Western Europe, Netherlandish travel literature on the Islamicate Mediterranean, vulgar Orientalism(s), the Congo Free State, modern-day legacies of European colonialism, and European and Ottoman encounters with the Maghreb (after 1700).
Memberships
Courses 2022:
Bachelor:
Master:
Een Mondiaal Midden-Oosten, 1798-1939