A possible approach to a theory like QCD is just to state its definition, and then immediately proceed deductively. However, this begs the question of why we should use this theory and not some other. Moreover, the approach is quite abstract, and the initial connection to the real physical world is missing.

Instead, I will take a quasi-historical approach, after first stating the theory. Such an approach is suitable for newcomers since their background in QCD is like that of its inventors/discoverers, i.e., little or none. There were several lines of development, all of which powerfully converged on a unique theory from key aspects of experimental data. Of course, we see this much more readily in retrospect than was apparent at the time of the original work, and my account is selective in focusing on the issues now seen to be the most significant. A historical approach also enables the introduction of ideas and methods that do not specifically depend on QCD: e.g., deeply inelastic scattering and the parton model.

I have tried to make the presentation self-contained, in summarizing the relevant experimental phenomena and their consequences for theory. The reader is only assumed to have a working knowledge of relativistic quantum field theory. Inevitably there are issues, ideas, experiments, and historical developments which will be unfamiliar to many readers, and for which a complete treatment needs much more space. I give references for many of these.