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 Later Ottoman Empire. His principal research interests are diplomatic milieus and the private-public nexus in interstate relations. 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 his thesis, he is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled Business of State: Belgium, the Ottoman Empire and Diplomacy in an Age of Capital, 1814-1914.

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 history of foreign consuls in Salonika at the intersection of national representation, global capital, and local affinities during the period 1878-1912.

Key publications

• (with Darina Martykánová) “Introduction: Charting New Ground in the Study of Ottoman Foreign Relations”, The International History Review (forthcoming in: vol. 43 (5) 2021).
• “‘Me Among the Turks?’ Western Commanders in the Late Ottoman Army and Their Self-Narratives”, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 27 (1-2) 2020, 88-110.
• (with Henk de Smaele) "L’Arménie dans la politique et l’imagination belge de l’avant-guerre", Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 97 2019, 809-840.
• (with Michael Auwers) “What is (New in) New Diplomatic History?”, Journal of Belgian History 48 (4) 2018, 112-122.
• (with Henk de Smaele and Edhem Eldem, eds.) To Kill A Sultan: A Transnational History of the Attempt on Abdülhamid II (1905), London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 281p – Read the introduction here
• (with Roel Markey) “‘Please Deny these Manifestly False Reports’: Ottoman Diplomats and the Press in Belgium (1850-1914)”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 48 (2) 2016, 267-292.

His publications can be accessed through Academia.edu.

Other interests

Finance capitalism, (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

• Founding member of the Turkey Studies Network in the Low Countries (TSN) - Follow us on Facebook @TurkeyStudies.LowCountries
• Member of the Network for New Diplomatic History (NDH)
• Member of Power in History: Centre for Political History (PoHis), UAntwerp
• Research member of the Spanish Ministry of Science funded TRANSCAP project: "The Transnational Construction of Capitalism During the Long 19^th Century: An Approach from Two Peripheral Regions – The Iberian World and The Mediterranean". PI: Juan Pan-Montojo & Darina Martykánová (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Courses 2021

• Geschiedenislab II: Reis naar de Oriënt. Het Osmaanse Rijk in reisverhalen uit de Lage Landen, 1750–1922
• De Wereld op Straat
• Nieuwste Geschiedenis
• Onderzoeksseminar: Europa en het Osmaanse Rijk