[2] In the Twilight of a Military Tradition, Hanlon revealed the surprising extent of Italian aristocratic participation in European wars, from Flanders and Hungary to Turkey and the Barbary Coast.
[citation needed] These elites then demilitarized rapidly under the weight of the economic crisis caused by the Thirty Years' War, and as the small states became militarily irrelevant, nobles moved instead into the service of the Church.
"[4] In Human Nature in Rural Tuscany and in several spinoff articles, Hanlon demonstrated that European populations almost certainly practiced neonatal infanticide on a large scale throughout the early modern period, at the expense of girls, but also boys when the uncertainty of survival and the cost of bringing them up outweighed the benefits for their married parents.
The Hero of Italy examines the illuminating experience of the young Duke of Parma, who embraced the French alliance against Spain only to suffer humiliating defeat.
[citation needed] Hanlon’s next book, "European Military Rivalry 1500-1750: Fierce Pageant", published by Routledge in April 2020, consists of an overview of European conflict in roughly chronological order, with chapters on the underlying structures permitting warfare on an ever larger scale, and several chapters describing the details of operational campaigning, siege warfare and the battlefield experience.