Colonial Violence, Trauma, and Collective Memory: An Original Historical-Psychological Framework for Southeastern Nigeria

This dissertation develops an original historical-psychological framework for analysing the long-run effects of colonial violence and collective trauma on community identity, political behaviour, and governance expectations in Southeastern Nigeria, encompassing Anambra, Imo, Abia, Enugu, and Ebonyi States. Existing scholarship on colonial violence focuses predominantly on immediate political and economic consequences while neglecting the psychological and cultural transmission mechanisms through which collective trauma shapes community dispositions across generations. The dissertation draws on three disciplines: historical analysis of colonial violence episodes including the 1901 Aro expedition, the 1929 Women's War, and the 1967 to 1970 Civil War; psychological research on intergenerational trauma transmission; and political science analysis of contemporary political behaviour in the South East. A sequential mixed-methods design is employed: systematic analysis of colonial violence archival records; a psychology-informed survey of 600 adult respondents measuring collective trauma indicators and political behaviour variables; and qualitative oral history research involving 55 in-depth interviews across three generations of families in four communities. The Intergenerational Trauma Theory, the Collective Memory Framework by Halbwachs, and the Post-Colonial Psychology Theory by Fanon jointly provide the theoretical anchors. The dissertation proposes the Colonial Trauma-Political Behaviour Mediation Model, which specifies how collective trauma transmitted through family and community narrative structures shapes political trust, institutional legitimacy perceptions, and secessionist sentiment in the contemporary South East. Keywords: colonial violence, collective trauma, historical psychology, Southeastern Nigeria, intergenerational memory.