Houssine Alloul · Assistant Professor of Modern Global History

I am a historian of the late Ottoman Empire and modern Europe. My main research focuses on the histories of interstate relations, the business-state nexus, and the social field of diplomats. At UvA, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on world history and modern historiography.

I am currently completing my first book, tentatively entitled The Business of Diplomacy: Small States, the Ottoman Empire and Global Capitalism. It retraces the long but forgotten history of the formidable tangle of investments that tied the Kingdom of Belgium to the Ottomans. Investigating how diplomatic agents engaged the worlds of finance and industry and how, vice versa, capitalists sought to influence official circles in Istanbul and Brussels, the book frames two spheres traditionally treated separately, altering our understanding of the interplay between international power politics and capitalist expansion. I recently gave an interview about this project to the Levantine Heritage Foundation.

Nearing completion too is an annotated English translation and critical edition of the future king Leopold II’s 1864-65 long lost diaries of a voyage through India and Southeast Asia, which I am preparing with Michael Auwers and Jan Vandersmissen. I have also begun work on a second book, for which I received an NWO XS grant. It proposes a sociocultural history of the peripatetic lives of Ottoman resident envoys in Europe between 1834–1914. A related project is the online database “Ottoman Diplomats.” Initiated with Thomas Crombez, it offers access to reports from the Imperial Legation in Brussels.

I am co-editor (with Edhem Eldem and Henk de Smaele) of To Kill A Sultan: A Transnational History of the Attempt on Abdülhamid II (Palgrave, 2018). The volume uncovers an event which the Times described as “one of the greatest and most sensational political conspiracies of modern times.” A Turkish translation was published in 2020. I have co-edited special issues for The International History Review (Routledge) on Ottoman foreign relations and for New Perspectives on Turkey (Cambridge University Press) on narrations of exile from, and to the Ottoman Empire. Other work has appeared in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, European Review of History, and Revue Belge d'Histoire Contemporaine. Recently, I have started experimenting with novel formats of writing, resulting in an essay in The European Review of Books. “Sick Men of Europe” pairs Leopold and Abdülhamid as twins of a kind – sovereigns in bourgeois garb –, to explore nineteenth-century monarchy and modernity and different kinds of royal haunting today. All my publications can be accessed here.

I have a longstanding interest in popular histories of Orientalism and collect obscure Netherlandish travel literature on the Ottoman lands. I talk about these pursuits in an episode of Radio Swammerdam (in Dutch).

Together with Melvin Wevers I am the PI of “Sound Affairs: Sonic Histories of Foreign Relations, 1700-1990,” funded through a Starting Grant. We publish a blog and convene an annual lecture series. I also serve on the editorial board of BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review and am a member of the Network for New Diplomatic History.

In 2025, I was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS). Prior to coming to UvA, I have been a Fulbright visiting scholar at Columbia University, an FWO visiting fellow at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, and a junior research fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz. I obtained my PhD, MA and BA degrees in History from the University of Antwerp and did undergraduate work at the Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice.

Courses 2025-2026

• Wereldgeschiedenis
• Historische Klassieken
• Bachelorscriptie (Seminar: Sonic Histories)
• Moderne Geschiedenis (Seminar)

PhD co-supervision

University of Amsterdam, History Department, 2024—
Holden Sage Carroll, “Soundscapes for Peace and Understanding: UNESCO Radio and the Sonic Practices of Postwar Internationalism” (with Melvin Wevers, main supervisor: Josephine Hoegaerts).

Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples, Global History and Governance Program, 2022—
Burak Beşir Fındıklı, “The Sultan’s Diplomats: A New Prosopography of the Ottoman Diplomatic Service in the Hamidian Era (1879-1909)” (main supervisor: Erik-Jan Zürcher, Leiden University).

University of Amsterdam, History Department, 2021—
David van Gent, “De Nederlandse rol bij de totstandkoming van het Suezkanaal (1854-1869)” (main supervisor: Remieg Aerts).

BA and MA theses supervised (selection)

• Madeleine Verdoorn (BA, 2026) “Geen tuin groeit uit zichzelf. Communicatie, onderhandeling en representatie in het transnationale netwerk van de Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam, 1829–1877.”
• Kel van Hienen (MA, 2026) “Bruggen slaan tussen Nederland en Roemenië. De rol van burgers bij de stedenband tussen Deventer en Sibiu, 1989-2007.”
• Julia Ballak (MA, 2025) “Jules van Zuylen van Nijevelt. Leven en werk van een (a)typische aristocraat in de Nederlandse diplomatie tijdens de negentiende eeuw.”
• Martijn Klinkert (MA, 2024) “Van de Polder naar de Adriatische Kust. Een onderzoek over de ontwikkeling van Nederlands toerisme naar Joegoslavië, 1950-1984.”
• Jonas Guigonnat (reMA, 2023) “‘Stammenoorlog’ en sociale malaise. Een onderzoek naar massamedia en radicale voetbalsupporters in Amsterdam en Parijs, 1976-2011.”
• Martijn Krol (BA, 2023) “Tussen bommen en medailles. Nederlandse diplomaten in het buitenland tijdens de anarchistische aanslagen.”
• Elem Yag (MA, 2022) "Turks islamisme in de jaren zeventig. De invloed van Necmettin Erbakan op de Nederlands-Turkse betrekkingen (1969-1980)."
• Carlos van Eck (BA, 2022) “Ordentelijkheid in Chaos. De moeizame reactie van het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken op revoluties in Rusland en Duitsland.”
• Elisabeth Rümke (MA, 2022) "Global history in het geschiedenisonderwijs. Een casestudy naar het curriculum op een Brits-internationale school in Portugal" (hoofdbegeleider: Carla van Boxtel).
• Roderik van Meurs (BA, 2021) "Oorlog en Broederliefde. Het Nederlandse Rode Kruis tijdens de Russisch-Osmaanse Oorlog van 1877-1878."