["The British Journal of Sociology, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nGurminder Bhambra's Annual Lecture points the way to a paradigm shift in how the social sciences should approach the nation‐state, both historically and in our own times. That is to say, perceiving of Britain historically as a nation‐state or as an imperial state will make all the difference; and, as Bhambra demonstrates, it is precisely the failure to grasp the imperial fact that prevents us from grasping ‘the shared histories that have configured our present’. This article reflects on the crucial imperial fact outlined by Bhambra, and it applies its radical consequences for our approach to the broader Western European scene and the world at large in the postwar period. Our contemporary nation‐state system, it is argued, is not the invention of Westphalia and European objectives, but rather the product of decolonization and thus a reaction and alternative to the European designs for the modern world order, in general, and the postwar order, in particular. In relation to this, the article also explains how Bhambra's work helps establish a historically informed critique of methodological nationalism, as opposed to the many misconceptions perpetuated by our current theoretical consensus of what ‘methodological nationalism’ entails.\n"]