First, I'm sorry if that's not the best place for me to post this. But I've learned about this war at school, and I want to know more about it, it wasn't an important war, so my teacher just talked a little bit about it, as a trivia. But anyway, it's a war between The Netherlands and Colonial Brazil. That's all I remember:
Spain had inherited Portugal and consequently, their colonies. So Spain was getting really rich because of all the gold and sugar from the colonies. Then The Netherlands decided to invest some money in Colonial Brazil, I don't know exactly why, maybe they wanted to do this so Brazil would sell sugar to them and not to Spain? But anyway, when the Dutch arrived in Brazil, Dutch people and Brazilians couldn't understand each other because of the language differences, so Brazilians thought it was an invasion and attacked then, so this war started.
So, my questions are, how Spain inherited Portugal? Why The Netherlands wanted to give Brazil money? And was this really a war or just a battle?
Thanks for the help and sorry for all the history mistakes I made, I really don't remember very much about this
You may be thinking of the founding of the Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie (Chartered West India Company) (WIC) in 1621. The WIC was given a charter by the States General for trade in the 'West', similar to the charter given to the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (United East India Company) (VOC) a couple of decades earlier. The charter meant that the WIC had a monopoly on (Dutch) trade with the Caribean and the Americas, and that might make you think that the company's purpose was trade. That would be wrong though.
The founding of the company in 1621 was no coincidence. In 1621 the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain came to an end and the Dutch wanted to strenghten their position overseas while weakening Spain. Plans for this had actually been made early in the 1600s, but in the negotiations with Spain for the Twelve Years' Truce the Dutch had promised not to do any trade in the West.
The basic plan was that the Dutch would try to take over Spanish and Portuguese colonies while also creating colonies in areas not settled by the Spain or Portugal. The WIC failed miserably in this part of the plan. Another task of the WIC was privateering - taking over Spanish and Portuguese ships bound for Europe. This went a bit better, the main success being the capture of the Spanish treasure fleet (known in Dutch as the zilvervloot: silver fleet) in 1628 by admiral Piet Hein.
In any case, it's only after the peace with Spain that and the end of privateering that the Dutch started getting involved in proper trade. So the idea that the Dutch came to trade but were forced to fight is wrong. Rather, it's the other way around: the were forced to trade because they were no longer allowed to fight.
Are you sure this is verbatim what your teacher stated? I'm positive Portugal had control of Macao and Brazil until each were given their independence. Both were two of the most lucrative Portuguese colonies. The only colonies Spain could've profited from claiming then would be the ones around the West African coast for the ivory and slaves.
As a follow up, are you sure this inheritance you think of is not just the Treaty of Tordesillas in which the Pope partitioned most of the New World to Spain? This allowed Spain to claim the riches from the empires of the Aztec and Incans.
Spain didn't inherited Portugal. The second Portuguese Dinasty died out and the three heirs available were a portuguese nobleman, a portuguese Duchess and the King of Spain (cousin of the previous king and grandson of an older portuguese king). So, obviously the Spanish King and his army managed to impose themselfes above the other two.
But Portugal was never part of Spain. The kingdoms were always separated. When years latter the King tried to change that, the portuguese revolted and a new King was chosen.
That said, when the King of Spain became also the King of Portugal, while the two empires were separated, from his POV he only had one huge empire. And he already had plans for his Spanish Empire; why should he care about the Portuguese Empire? Too much work. Around that time in History the Portuguese colonies had to take care of themselfes. And the Dutch took advantage of that.
In the East, Portugal lost a lot of land to them, but in Brazil the portuguese colones managed to mostly fight them off. Latter, when Portugal once again had no connection with Spain, the Dutch were definitively kicked off.
There was a long war between Portugal and the Netherlands because of this, but it eventually ended with a commercial agreement.