Twenty Years of the Journal of Historical Sociology Volume 1: Essays on the British State -- Contents -- Preface: A Curious Little Magazine -- An Introduction: Volume 1, Essays on the British State -- Perspectives -- Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State -- The Genesis of American Capitalism: an Historical Inquiry into State Theory -- Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating "British" History -- Studies -- The Peculiarities of the English State -- Engla Lond: the Making of an Allegiance -- The Beginnings of English Imperialism -- The English State and the "Celtic" Peoples 1100-1400 -- Hand and Mouth: Information Gathering and Use in England in the Later Middle Ages -- Civilizing Northumberland: Representations of Englishness in the Tudor State -- Science, Power, Bodies: The Mobilization of Nature as State Formation -- The Rise of the Information State: the Development of Central State Surveillance of the Citizen in England, 1500-2000 -- Debates -- When and What Was the State -- When/What was the English State: the Later Middle Ages -- "The State as Monarchical Commonwealth": "Tudor" England -- The Medieval State: The Tyranny of a Concept -- There were States in Medieval Europe: A Response to Rees Davies -- The Ghost of Max Weber -- Contentions of the Purse between England and its European Rivals from Henry V to George IV: a Conversation with Michael Mann -- Putting the Weberian State in its Social, Geopolitical and Militaristic Context: A Response to Patrick O'Brien.