The Jews were a test case for humanitarian intervention in the nineteenth century, but the story of Great Power intervention in the Jewish Question has received little attention from historians. With a few notable exceptions, those working in Jewish studies have neglected international politics in favour of social and cultural history. Those working outside Jewish studies have not grasped the relevance of this story to broader humanitarian initiatives. Yet the Jewish story matters because this is an early example of intervention on behalf of a group who (unlike Greeks or Syrian Christians) were not ‘people like us’. Great Power intervention in the Jewish Question may have been diplomatic rather than military, but it shaped the legal and political context in which Jews lived in the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans. As a result the balance between interest and ideology is different. By lobbying for diplomatic intervention in the name of ‘humanity’ and ‘civilisation’, Jewish activists helped create a context in which the treatment of religious and ethnic minorities became a precondition of acceptance into an international state system that was increasingly governed by Western norms.