I've only found rather brief information online so I'm hoping that the details can be filled in. What did the people of Pompeii think during this time? How exactly did events unfold over the course of the decade? When Pompeii eventually became a Roman colony and thousands of soldiers moved into the city, what effect did this have on daily life?
Thank you for any replies!
Unfortunately, the nature of political domination is that the dominated are frequently rendered voiceless. We can describe the "Romanization" of Pompeii and the political actions undertaken in that process, but we can't really describe the reactions of the Oscan natives because their voice is lost to history. That being said, a description of the process does reveal some things about the common experience.
Anyway, Pompeii is captured in 89 BCE and becomes a colony for Sulla's veterans in 80 BCE. The actual mechanism for this is a bit unclear, and some have argued that this involved wholesale displacement, with Pompeiian land confiscated and given to Sulla's veterans. This is certainly possible and within the capability of the Roman state, but it is worth noting that Appian claims 3,000 died outside of Pompeii's walls and 20,000 outside of Nola, by which I mean there was a fair amount of now empty land. Caesar in his consulship settled a further 20,000 veterans in Campania, and given that a lot of the fiercest fighting of the Social Wars took place in Campania I think its possible these resettlements were enabled by a certain depopulation in the region. Anyway, that is idle speculation, /u/LegalExpert is the Social Wars expert.
Anyway, with the new settlers came a new political order, and two names pop up constantly: Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Porcius. Their names are everywhere, their statues are everywhere, and they built on an enormous scale. They built the amphitheater out of their own funds, supervized the odeon and probably were involved with the various temples and baths constructed at the same time. So the Romanization was highly politicized, with new, well connected Romans leaders, particularly these two men. The flip side of this political marginalization was a new influx of money shown, similarly, by these new building projects. Pompeii became a much larger, grander city with the coming of the Romans.
And I think that it is worth noting that while the early history of the colony was dominated by Roman names the older families fairly quickly reasserted themselves. It was a domination, but a moderated domination. My personal opinion is that the leadership of the Roman veterans consciously made the choice not to be tyrannical.
The best source is Paul Zanker's Pompeii, although he takes a far more pessimistic view than I do.