Kristen Alff

Bio

Kristen Alff specializes in the history of the Middle East and North Africa and the global political economy. She is interested in explorations of gender, race, and the environment in the history of global capitalism. Alff is at work on her first book, Violent Interests: Capitalism and Social Transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1830s – 1930s. It traces the practices of competition and cooperation between joint-stock companies across the Mediterranean, which gave global capitalism its shape. Her second book investigates local technologies of agriculture in Ottoman Palestine. Alff’s work has appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History, IJMES, and Enterprise and Society. Alff has also written in public history forums such as The Conversation, The Economic Historian, and World History Commons.

Office Hours

• Tue/Thurs 3-4, Withers 462

Website

Research Publications

Book Chapters and Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

“Family Partnerships to Joint-stock Companies in the Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean” in ed. Meltem Toksoz, The Routledge History of the Ottoman Empire (Routledge Press, under advanced contract)

“Changing Capitalist Structures and Settler-Colonial Land Purchases in Northern Palestine, 1897-1922” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 55 (Nov. 2023).

“Landed Property, Capital Accumulation, and Polymorphous Capitalism in Egypt and the Levant, 1850-1920” in eds. Joel Beinin, Bassam Haddad, Sherene Seikaly, Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa, (Stanford University Press, 2021).

“The Business of Property: Land, Law, and Capitalism Around the Mediterranean,” Enterprise and Society, 21:4 (Dec. 2020).

“Levantine Joint-Stock Companies, Trans-Mediterranean Partnerships and Nineteenth-Century Capitalist Development,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 60:1 (January 2018).

Book Manuscript in Progress

Kristen Alff, Violent Interests: Capitalism and Social Transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1830s-1940s (Stanford University Press, reader reports received April 2, 2025)

Public Scholarship

“A British Inheritance: The Importance of World War I in the History of Labor Zionism,” Broadsides January 12, 2024. https://www.nacbs.org/post/a-british-inheritance-the-importance-of-world-war-i-in-the-history-of-labor-zionism.

“The Sursock Family Companies, Property, and Influence in the First Globalization Era” Sursock Museum, 2023-2024.

“Property Disputes in Israel come with a Complicated Back Story – and tend to end with Palestinian Dispossession,” The Conversation, June 14, 2021.

“The Limited Corporation: A History of Global Capitalism,” The Economic Historian, June 8, 2021.

“Short Teaching Module: The Forgotten Beirut-based Companies in the Global History of Capitalism” World History Commons, 2021. https://worldhistorycommons.org/short-teaching-module-forgotten-beirut-based-companies-global-history-capitalism.

Area(s) of Expertise

Alff is interested in global history, international studies, political economy of the global south, modern Middle East history, business history, gender studies, environmental history, disaspora studies, and the history of the company