I was watching this scene from the Marco Polo series where Kublai Khan was criticized about embracing Chinese traditions in his Mongol court. It reminded me of Graham Fuller’s insight in Turkey’s New Geopolitics: “Historically, the Ottomans, and later other external powers, discovered that occupying a region was only the first step. The deeper challenge lay in truly integrating or ‘digesting’ the societies, cultures, and identities they had swallowed.”
History shows that great powers like the Mongols, Ottomans and Alexander the Great often ended up being absorbed by the cultures they conquered, from marrying into local families to proudly adopting new identities. The cultural, religious, and historical roots run deep and they almost always reassert themselves despite superpower’s best attempts at conquering people.