Bringing the Joseph Conrad Centenary to a close, this guest lecture by Prof Robert Hampson will fall into three parts. The first will discuss Conrad’s debut novel, Almayer’s Folly, and the preface he wrote for it (which the publisher did not include in the volume). In this preface Conrad expresses ‘human solidarity’, which takes the form of an affirmation of the ‘bond between us and that humanity so far away’, as well as his readiness to ‘sympathise with common mortals, no matter where they live’. This echoes the root sense of cosmopolitanism: the status of being a citizen of the world. The second part examines the figure of Martin Decoud in Nostromo with his ‘Frenchified – but most unFrench – cosmopolitanism’, who demonstrates Conrad’s critique of cosmopolitanism. It uses Decoud’s involvement in the politics of Costaguana as the transition to a consideration of transnational activism. The final part of the lecture will discuss Conrad’s late-career engagement in transnational activism in relation to Polish independence.