Summary My starting point is Andre Gunder Frank’s argument, who, in his classic studies on Latin America, pointed out that development and underdevelopment were not internships through which all countries passed, but that there was a link between development and underdevelopment, where the development of some countries involved deliberate and specific underdevelopment of others. In this sense, the creation of the metropolitan area involved at the same time the creation of the periphery. As in the case of economic development, this process also takes place with regard to the historical construction of the meanings of masculinity. As the hegemonic ideal of masculinity is established, it is created as opposed to a bundle of ‘others’, whose masculinity has been problematic and devalued. Hegemonic and subalters emerge in mutual and unequal interaction, in a social and economic order with a distorted prior demarcation of gendered peers. In this work, I see the historic emergence of the hegemonic version of masculinity in the United States and Western Europe from the 18th century to the present day. I describe the ways in which the ‘self-made-man’ has surpassed and discredited other versions of masculinity – that of black men, immigrants, homosexuals, older men, high class men, working class men – as well as the woman, in that she became the dominant form of success with a perennial bias in the public arena. I describe the hegemonic version of masculinity – the globalised capitalist who, in each country, attends CNN in luxury hotels, speaks by cell phone, uses powerful ties and makes meals with power – as a direct descendant of the 18th century trader.