To have no past is to have no present.

To have no past is to have no present. To manufacture the past is to have a manufactured present. It might be asserted that it is not possible to have anything but a manufactured past. Should this be the definition of history from which we must manufacture the past then the only way to have a rich, nuanced, highly functional, non-partisan present is to manufacture a rich, nuanced, highly functional, independent history. To re-contextualize history in order to make it serve partisan purposes can only arrive at a de-contextualized, unstable present with no other reality than what can be imposed via  power.

To fail to accomplish perfect certitude about all events and contexts of the past is the unfortunate and insuperable fate of all legitimate attempts at history. For this reason, the manufacture of history is a demanding pursuit requiring each subsequent practitioner to improve upon the previous attempts at disinterested improvement of the record in order to bring it closer and closer to the truth.  The victors do, indeed, write the histories, and, over time, the historians rewrite them.