What is foreign educational history? What is the use of foreign educational history? As an academic field, what should be studied in foreign educational history, and how should it be studied? As a category of knowledge, what should foreign educational history teach? How should it be taught? These questions constitute the starting-point propositions of foreign educational history. In the process of a century of foreign educational history in China, these propositions have been repeatedly discussed by generations of scholars. They are not only related to the ontology of educational history, but also point more to a series of problems such as the purpose, meaning, attributes, and paradigm of educational history. It has mainly experienced four basic stages of development: 1) The beginning of the germination in the early 20th Century to the beginning of the reform and opening up. In China, foreign educational history grew comparatively with higher normal education. As a course, the requirements to compile textbooks and research were produced by it. Before the founding of New China, the earliest textbooks on foreign educational history in China were mainly based on the directly translated works of Japanese scholars. In 1921, An Outline of Western Educational History was generally acknowledged by the academic community as the first foreign educational general history independently written by Chinese scholars. It was compiled by Jiang Qi and led to a "golden age" of foreign educational general history compilation in the 1920s and 1930s. However, with the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, foreign educational history compilation and research immediately entered a period of low tide. After the founding of New China and before the reform and opening up, the compilation and research of foreign educational history were also disturbed to a great extent by ideology. 2) The difficult recovery in the early 1980s. After the reform and opening up in 1978, the recovery and reconstruction of foreign educational history work began. In the early 1980s, the scholars of foreign educational history began to discuss specific theoretical problems such as ontology, theory of knowledge, methodology, and value theory in the subject system of foreign educational history. This was based on clarifying the misunderstandings of foreign educational history research before the reform and opening up. 3) The positive development in the mid-1980s. The textbook construction of foreign educational history achieved fruitful results, and a large number of textbooks were published. The academic organizational system was perfected and academic content emerged. Many young foreign educational history scholars enthusiastically discussed problems regarding historical material construction, research categories, and research methodologies. 4) The crisis and turn since the new century. On the one hand, the enrollment number, discipline construction, and textbook compilation of foreign educational history have been considerably developed. However, on the other hand, there are practical problems such as a decrease in research teams, the imbalance of personnel structure, the anomie of research work, and slow discipline development. In the face of crisis, problems such as ontology value, research paradigm, and historical material construction have begun to be systematically reflected in foreign educational history research. The foreign educational history view has begun to be reflected under the influence of new history. Western educational history theory has begun to be challenged. After reviewing the process of a century of foreign educational history, we can clearly see that, on the one hand, due to the hard work of scholars, foreign educational history research has made positive progress under extremely difficult conditions. However, on the other hand, long-standing problems, which seriously constrain substantial research progress, have not been sufficiently resolved. Future researches on foreign educational history should focus on the following aspects: first, scientific and rational views of educational history have to be constructed. The legitimacy and rationality of educational history as a discipline should be communicated. Secondly, the relationship between "seeking knowledge" and "seeking for use" is correctly handled. The utilitarianism and pragmatism in educational history research should be opposed. Thirdly, the normative consciousness of educational history research is strengthened. The collation of academic history and historical material construction should be strengthened. This should give educational history research a stronger methodological consciousness. Fourthly, the relationship between "macro understanding" and "microscopic research" and the relationship between "foreign research" and "China’s vision" is handled scientifically. This should give Chinese foreign educational history research a strong starting point for sustainable development.