Yuan Zujie, born in Laizhou, Shandong in August 1963. He graduated from the History Department of Jilin University in 1985, and received a bachelor's degree; then got a master's degree in American History from Nankai University in 1988; from 1988 to 1994, he taught at the Institute of History of Nankai University; in 1994, he went to the United States for study with a scholarship awarded by Harvard-Yenching Institute, and got his doctoral degree in History from the University of Minnesota in 2002. From 2002 to 2004, he taught at the History Department of the Southwestern University, and the Northern Michigan University successively. From 2005, he began to teach at the School of History and Culture, Sichuan University. Now he is a co-editor in chief of Frontiers of History in China, Executive Deputy Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Sichuan University (edition of philosophy and social sciences). His early studies mainly focused on American diplomatic history, and history of Canada, etc.; during his stay in the United States, he was devoted to the comparison study on the modernization process of China and Western countries. Currently he mainly focuses on the studies of the cultural, economic and social transformation of the United States in the 19^th Century, as well as the political, cultural and commercial development during the Ming and Qing Dynasties of China.