Conquerors and Monks

If you control an identity, you control the person behind that identity. One of the control points is a person's belief systems. Conquerors know that.

Sometime back, I wrote that a successful conquest requires that you create a person's identity - one that depends on you.

Chances are that a land conquered will not be immediately prosperous. So, there is quite a likelihood that kids would grow up hating you because they are still poor. So you can give out alms; that would make life easier for one and all. Perhaps you could raise alms through taxes. By the time the kids grow up to hate the “old ways”, the original conqueror is long gone. What is now in place is an institutionalized political system that is on the verge of collapse. The belief system will now spiral out of control as there are no more reference points.

Which is precisely why the art of conflict and politics is inherently short-lived, no matter what the original intent.