With arguably the largest number of speakers of any postcolonial variety of English and a history stretching over four centuries, Indian English has received more attention in the literature than many other varieties. This chapter will track its emergence and development from the end of the sixteenth century onwards, from early English-speaking travelers and the earliest English trading ventures via the gradual extension of British colonial power over the subcontinent and its linguistic consequences, to the diffusion of English to ever greater sections of society at the start of the twenty-first century. Regarding the structure of Indian English, this chapter will take advantage of the large body of corpus-based research which has probed into the actual frequency and distribution of a wide range of Indian English features, allowing for a more empirical approach towards Indian English, encompassing its phonology, morphosyntax, lexicon and (discourse) pragmatics.