What is History?

As I begin to read Paul Halliday's Habeas Corpus - From England to Empire, whose premise is that conventional knowledge of Habeas Corpus is based on an incorrect perspective on history, I can't help but admit that he's right, at least so far about the analysis of the historical record.

I have never liked the phrase "history is written by the victor," because the victor isn't writing history - he's writing his perspective on history, which is no more valid than that of the looser.  In the past, I had thought that merely reading two opposing interpretations of history was adequate to get a full perspective on a topic  ... but when you think about it, what if both sides got it wrong?  Or what if you never had an adversarial relationship to begin with, but over hundreds of years the original meaning eroded over time?

Back to the issue of Habeas Corpus, it wasn't in the Magna Carta in the 13th century, but definitely existed by the 17th century.  Halliday writes that:

Despite the force of this belief, connecting the thirteenth century to the seventeenth along a single story line has always proved difficult. So much awkward silence separates them that some authors have thrown up their hands [saying the writ's origin "is lost in obscurity"].  Others have filled the silence with inferred lineages sprinkled with words of praise, borrowing heavily from nineteenth century historians. . . who in turn accepted [another historian's claims in the] 1620s as gospel truth. . . . Accounts of habeas corpus written in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries thus serve as durable examples of what Herbert Butterfield long ago called "whig" history. As Butterfield remarked, "the whig historian can draw lines through certain events ... to modern liberty." In doing so, the historian "begins to forget that this line is merely a mental trick." A linear approach to the writ's past that starts in 1215 fit nicely with a high Victorian impulse to write histories drawn in bold story lines with clear points of origin and arrival. But for all the power of such narratives, they do not amount to a history.  (Halliday 16).  

This paragraph blew my mind.  Never before - even when getting a Masters degree in International Affairs [which is just a History degree with a cooler name], and taking all of those history courses had anyone laid out how it's all wrong.  We're not basing our opinions by looking at original sources, your average history book is looking at tertiary sources who cited tertiary sources, who try to construct a false narrative to make it simpler than it actually is.  Comparing two opposing perspectives of this kind of history does not lead to the truth, because both sides are equally wrong.  You can't find the truth by averaging two or more incorrect statements.

So, what is history?  I have always seen it as the study and search for the truth of the events that have happened in the past.  When available, as it was with Halliday in his study of Habeas Corpus, History is Primary Sources.  Then again, Halliday spent five years combing through thousands of medieval documents, something the average individual - or even scholar - just can't do.  So in a case like that, history is a collection of secondary sources like Halliday's book, which heavily cites primary sources.

But in the end, I'm still not happy putting that much trust in one man, because even unconscious agenda's can color one's research and writing.  In an ideal world, I would like to see these ancient documents scanned and made freely available online for anyone to read through, and come to their own conclusions, and maybe write their own book which also heavily cites primary sources.