Originally the Bialystok community formed part of the Tykocin (Tiktin) community. Jewish settlement in the village of Bialystok was encouraged by the manorial overlords, the counts of Branicki. In 1745 the Bialystok community became self-governing, although remaining within the Tykocin province. The heads of the Jewish community were permitted to take part in municipal elections in 1749. In 1759 the Jews had to contribute two-thirds of the funds required to provision the armies in transit through Bialystok. The character of the craft guilds explicitly admits Jewish membership. Communal affairs were regulated by the counts in 1749 and 1777. By 1765, there were 765 Jews living in Bialystok.

The position of the Jews deteriorated when Bialystok passed to Prussia (1795), and subsequently to Russia. Its situation on the western border was favorable for developing trade with Russian markets, however, and the Jews were able to earn a livelihood as army purveyors or importers of tea and other commodities. The economic situation deteriorated when there was an influx of Jews expelled from the neighboring villages in 1825–35 and 1845, under the 1804 discriminatory legislation (see Russia), who crowded into Bialystok. There was a steep increase in the Jewish population which in 1856 numbered 9,547 out of a total population of 13,787, many of them homeless or unemployed. Welfare institutions were established in an attempt to alleviate matters. The development of the large textile industry in Bialystok after the Napoleonic wars owes much to Jewish enterprise. A number of the soldiers from Saxony were expert weavers and spinners who settled in Bialystok and established workshops largely financed by Jews; textile mills were erected by two Jews in 1850. As they acquired spinning, weaving, knitting, and dyeing skills, Jews replaced the German specialists. In 1860, 19 of the 44 textile mills in Bialystok were Jewish owned, with an output valued at 3,000,000 rubles; in 1898, of the 372 mills in Bialystok, 299 (80.38%) were Jewish owned, while 5,592 (59.5%) of the workers were Jewish. Of the total output of the Bialystok mills for this year, valued at 12,855,000 rubles, the Jewish share amounted to 47.3%.

The Jewish labor movement found strong support in Bialystok, and in 1897 many Jewish workers there became members of the Bund. The Bialystok Jewish workers issued an underground newspaper, Der Byalistoker Arbayter, the same year. The intensive activities of the labor movement in Bialystok during the Russian revolution of 1905–06 provoked savage acts of reprisal by the Russian authorities. The pogroms in Bialystok that occurred between June 1 and 3, 1906, were the most violent of the mob outbreaks against Russian Jewry that year, resulting in 70 Jews being killed and 90 gravely injured. The commission of inquiry later appointed by the Duma to investigate the circumstances surrounding the pogrom held both the local police and the central authorities to blame for the tragedy. A prolonged crisis in Bialystok's trade and industry followed.

The contacts with German Jewry during the period that Bialystok was governed by Prussia had introduced the spirit of Enlightenment (Haskalah) into Jewish circles in Bialystok. Prominent in the movement were members of the Zamenhof family; Abraham Schapiro, author of Toledot Yisrael ve-Sifruto (1892); Jehiel Michael Zubludowsky, a contributor to Ha-Karmel and author of Ru'ah Hayyim (1860); and the poet Menahem Mendel Dolitzki. A Hovevei Zion group was formed in Bialystok in 1880. Zionism in its manifold ideological ramifications subsequently gained numerous supporters. The Bialystok Zionists were led by Samuel Mohilewer, and later by Joseph Chasanowich. Rabbis living in Bialystok in the 19th century included Aryeh Leib b. Baruch Bendit (1815–20), author of Sha'agat Aryeh; Yom Tov Lipmann Heilpern (1849–79); and Samuel Mohilewer (1883–98).