This paper examines Baghdadi-Jewish responses to the 1908 Ottoman revolution from 1908 through the initial months of British occupation in 1917. It argues that while Baghdadi-Jews remained supportive of the revolution’s ideals, the Ottoman government’s inability to follow through on its promises following the empire’s entry into World War I convinced Baghdad’s Jewish elite that it would have to look to other powers in order to guarantee future domestic political equality. Thus, wealthy and politically active Baghdadi-Jews welcomed British rule in 1917, not because it would aid Jewish elite economic interests but rather because it was able and willing to ensure political equality for Baghdad’s minorities. The issue of British-Jewish cooperation in Baghdad haunted Iraq’s Jews during the 1930s and 1940s as certain sections of Iraqi nationalist society began painting Jews as British and Zionist collaborators. My research does not aim to discount the importance of Jewish cooperation with the British, though it certainly fizzled during the 1920s, but rather to better understand the rationale behind it. This paper shows that initial Baghdadi-Jewish support of British rule did not reflect anti-nationalist, anti-Arab communal sentiments. Rather the British offered something that the specter of an independent local government could not guarantee, the realization of equal rights promised by the 1908 revolution. Thus it was the Ottoman government’s failure to follow through on its promises which led Baghdad’s Jewish elite, which was not only thoroughly Ottomanized but also receptive to the ‘westernized’ ideas of the 1908 revolution due to contacts with western European Jews and the local activities of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, that pushed Baghdad’s Jewish elite into accepting British rule in 1917. Methodologically this paper seeks to analyze Baghdadi-Jewish political behavior through the lens of re-imagined political horizons in the wake of the 1908 revolution. It draws from Jewish memoirs, British Foreign Office reports, and the correspondence of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, a French-Jewish philanthropic and educational society that operated several schools in Baghdad. Finally this paper takes issue with previous studies, which have either attempted to paint British-Jewish cooperation as a result of a confluence of economic interests or to view the cooperation as the only viable political option for Baghdad’s Jews. This study demonstrates that Jews were active, not passive, agents during the transitory colonial period immediately following the cessation of Ottoman rule and just before the beginning of independent Iraqi rule.