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.

He is currently working on a monograph, tentatively entitled The Business of Diplomacy: The Ottoman Empire and Belgium in the Age of Capital. The book retraces the extensive but forgotten histories of intense interaction between the Kingdom of Belgium and the Ottoman Empire, from the 1800s up to 1923. It looks in particular at how small power diplomacy, the global circulation of capital, and transnational sociabilities interlaced. (For a recent interview on this book project, see here.)

His latest research project, funded by NWO, is a comparative cultural and social history of Ottoman resident envoys in Europe in the period 1834-1914. Paying specific attention to the ways in which these multireligious diplomats (and their families) sustained their social network and sought to integrate themselves in local elite milieus, the project revisits conventional historical narratives of the development of ‘European’ diplomacy (as practice, culture, and institution) at a time of Western colonial expansion and increasing military and technological dominance.

He is also preparing, together with Jan Vandersmissen (Ghent University) and 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. He is, in addition, working on an article-length study of Leopold’s lifetime ‘fixation’ (speculative/Orientalist/imperialist) with the Ottoman lands.

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 and did undergraduate work at the Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice.

Key publications

• (with Darina Martykánová) “Introduction: Charting New Ground in the Study of Ottoman Foreign Relations”, The International History Review 43 (5) 2021, 1018–1040.
• “‘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.

Other interests

New History of Capitalism, consular history, (post-)Ottoman diasporas in Western Europe, Netherlandish travel literature on the Islamicate Mediterranean, vernacular Orientalism(s), the Congo Free State, Belgian history, 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 2022-2023

• Wereldgeschiedenis
• Geschiedenislab II (Seminar: Naar de Oriënt! Het Osmaanse Rijk in Noord- en Zuid-Nederlandse reisverslagen, 1750-1922)
• Moderne Geschiedenis (Seminar)
• Onderzoeksseminar: Europa en het Osmaanse Rijk, 1683-1922
• Bachelorscriptie (Seminar: New Diplomatic History)
• Een Mondiaal Midden-Oosten, 1798-1939 (MA)

Theses supervised

• Elem Yag (2022) "Turks islamisme in de jaren zeventig. De invloed van Necmettin Erbakan op de Nederlands-Turkse betrekkingen (1969-1980)"
• Elisabeth Rümke (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 (2021) "Oorlog en Broederliefde. Het Nederlandse Rode Kruis tijdens de Russisch-Osmaanse Oorlog van 1877-1878"