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Nelson Mandela's 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom concludes with a moving meditation on the way in which his concept of freedom gradually broadened out until it extended far beyond the personal, racial and national, to become an all-inclusive vision of a universal and indivisible liberty. It is because of this broad humanistic vision that Mandela became a figure of global importance, even though his time in office as the first president of a newly democratic South Africa was, in fact, quite brief. The history of how this happened, how Mandela accrued this international status, especially after his release from prison in February 1990, has already been traced by many other writers. It is a fascinating story: at once a drama of international reconfiguration, of national reimaging, of transnational solidarity, of the media, of machinations on the part of opposing political parties and, of course, of a fine, tactical performance of dignified selfhood. That story is already part of our history of the twentieth century. But how did Mandela see the world and how was this vision constrained or enabled by political circumstances? If he came to be received by the world as a galvanizing emblem of moral world citizenship and as an embodiment of the possibility (however short-lived) of an entirely new post-Cold War global dispensation, how did Mandela's own cognitive map of the world originate and evolve to match this moment? What were its outlines, its lineaments of political aversion and solidarity?

DOI: 10.1057/9781137500960_14

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