So this is a really fun question, but it is tricky to answer because imperial strategies changed over time and varied regionally, especially between the East Indies and the Atlantic world. I'm not an expert on the East Indies, so I'll leave that to someone else, but I can tell you about what historians refer to as the Atlantic world, that is, a multi-imperial space defined by networks that criss-crossed the Atlantic Ocean, touching Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. England/Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Dutch Republic all had their own Atlantic systems which is often how historians study them. Nowadays historians focus a lot of attention on the entanglements of these systems and how they overlap with eachother, but there is still value in the comparative approach that assesses each system thematically. I'll give you a short rundown of all five you listed, and then list some books that analyze each in much more detail.
Portugal: The Portuguese were essentially the first of the Western European explorers, spreading to Africa and the East Indies before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil. In Africa and the East Indies, the Portuguese established what is called a "factory system" which is essentially a web of fortified trading posts that dotted the coasts of whereever Portuguese merchants could access exotic markets. The factory was the fortified settlement and the merchants were known as factors. Sometimes this include Catholic missions, but for the most part, the Portuguese stuck to the coast and were focused on trade rather than colonization. The one exception to this would be Brazil where it was discovered that many lucrative commodities could be grown including sugar, tobacco, and brazilwood (used to make red dye). Since the Portuguese relied on very small colonial forces to maintain their trading posts, they often relied on maintaining amicable diplomatic relations with local indigenous groups in the East Indies, West Africa, and Brazil. Sometimes these relationships went sour, but the Portuguese recognized local polities ultimately were in control.
Spain: Spain's colonization efforts are bit different because it was built on an ideology of conquest. This is partly due to the conclusion of the Reconquista in Spain, but also because Caribbean indigenous groups had spread rumors of gold to Columbus so he would move on and leave them alone. So fast forward a bit... Cortez (1519)... Pizarro (1532)... 1580. Okay, so in 1580 we have the Iberian Union which means Portgual is absorbed into the Spanish monarchy, but retains its own king. So from 1580 to 1640, Portugual and Spain basically function as one Iberian empire, but they still retain autonomy within their own systems. This is important because Portugal had already established a strong slave/sugar trade between West Africa and Brazil. Meanwhile, Spain had colonized most of the Great Antilles and had two large colonial jursidictions operating around Peru and Mexico. The main objective for Spain was still resource extraction which included silver from Bolivia and Argentina, gold from Northern South America and Central America, and pearls from the Caribbean. In all three of these trades, Spain relied on indigenous and African slaves. They also used slaves to extract salt from Venezuela, and to plant sugar and tobacco on coastal plantations and in the Caribbean. This is why Spain's tie to Portugal was crucial because they relied on Portuguese ships from Africa to maintain a supply of slaves to the Americas as more and more Native Americans died of small pox and measles and were generally more difficult to subdue in their own homelands. Anyway, increased privateering efforts by the English, French, and Dutch forced the Spanish Crown to consolidate their treasure fleets into a biannual flota system that was heavily guarded. This was not so successful though because Europeans could predict the voyages and internal corruption in the Spanish government only made things worse. Hence, the Spanish American colonies were almost always in perpetual decline because the Spanish Crown and political system of patronage always ensured the government was spending more than it could take in. War with England, and then with the Dutch Republic, forced Spain to focus on continental Europe, leaving the colonies to essentially govern themselves. The Spanish colonies often relied on other European empires for survival. There is a good microhistory by Linda Rupert called Creolization and Contraband that goes into detail on this in the context of Venezuela and the Dutch island of Curacao. Spain would continue to decline, but remained an Atlantic presence until the eighteenth century. What people don't know is that the Spanish colonies had emancipated most of their slaves by the time African slavery had exploded in the English, French, and Dutch realms. FUN FACT: Recent scholarship has uncovered how Spain relied on African auxiliary forces in their conquest of Mexico.
The Dutch Republic: The Dutch empire is super interesting, but also very short-lived. In 1568, the northern Low Countries declared independence from Spain. (Look up the Act of Abjuration and compare it to the Declaration of Independence). The Dutch Revolt broke out, and they would continue to fight with Spain on and off until 1648. By the 1590s, the Dutch began to take the war front out into the Atlantic with the hope that injuring Spain's American colonies would bankrupt the Crown and end the war. The Dutch had acquired extensive knowledge of Atlantic markets from Portuguese Jews who had fled to Amsterdam from Antwerp after the Spanish took the city in 1585. As a result, the Dutch were basically given the Portuguese playbook and followed suit, only they entered with the full intent of fighting the Iberian powers rather than "conquering" territory. There were definitely merchants interested in trading, but the war was by far the leading cause to expand outward. The Dutch essentially went everywhere the Portuguese and Spanish were and fought them at every turn with the hope that African and Native American peoples subjugated would come to their aid and rebel. Some attacks were successful (like Salvador, Brazil in 1624) and the capture of Elmina. Others were not as the local loyalties to the Portuguese and Spanish proved stronger than the Dutch thought. The only place the Dutch went that was not neighboring an Iberian power was New Netherland (New York) where they established a fur trading colony. Most North American scholarship only focuses on this colony, but the most important Dutch colony was Brazil which they had secured from the Portguese by 1630 and controlled precariously until 1654 when creole (Luso-Brazilian) planters rebelled with Portuguese forces and specific Indian and African allies. Other Dutch colonies included Forts along the west coast of Africa and Caribbean islands like Curacao and St. Maarten and St. Eustatius. St. Eustatius would be important during the American Revolution as a lot of Dutch gunpowder was smuggled into American hands from there. Anyway, apart from Brazil and to some extent New Netherland, the Dutch copied the Portuguese factory system and essentially maintained small outposts and relied on local support from indigenous peoples. After the loss of Brazil, and then New Netherland in 1664, the Dutch empire slowly faded away. The Dutch West India Company (formed in 1621) was dissolved in 1674 because it could not pay its debts and this is partly why the colonies collapsed since they were left in neglect by the WIC. Another reason the colonies collapsed was that it was difficult for the Dutch to find settlers (for Brazil and New Netherland). The seventeenth century was the Dutch Golden Age, and it didn't make sense for people to risk their lives abroad to disease, war, or shipwreck, when plentiful employment could be found at home. This is why many of the troops and colonists in the Dutch Atlantic empire weren't actually Dutch, but Jewish, Scandinavian, French, etc. After 1674, a new WIC was founded and the Dutch empire essentially was converted into a giant trade network where Dutch ships performed transit operations for other European powers including the slave trade.