This book integrates a historical and linguistic exploration of world English, documenting the emergence of the language as a contested site of linguistic encounters. It revises the understanding of English spread during the colonial period, emphasizing the agency of non-mother-tongue English speakers. The book contends that English owes its existence as a world language in large part to the struggle against imperialism but not to imperialism alone. To explain English varieties, the book introduces a new linguistic model of second language acquisition by speech communities: macroacquisition.