The volume is concerned with Imperial Germany's identity as a colonial power from the perspectives of language history and discourse analysis. The formation of identity as a colonising power cannot be separated from the establishment of particular forms of communication. It is principally through linguistic action that a sense of communal equality is created. Thus the discursive, ideological and imagined identity as a colonial power manifests itself as a substantial field in national communication between 1884/85 and 1919. The articles in the volume are designed to make a fundamental contribution to the linguistic history of German colonialism.