Hopefully you've now got the idea that the study of history means reading and in my humble opinion, reading makes you more knowledgeable about a specific topic.
History is a reading subject.
You can't sit in an empty room and write history. You must have evidence. You must have facts. You must have interpretations. My own habit, when confronted with a research essay, was to head off to the library and find as many books as I could about the topic at hand.