 When Philip II of Spain became King of Portugal after the 1580 Portuguese succession crisis, Portuguese colonies came under attack from Spain's enemies, especially the Dutch and the English, who were also hoping to expand their overseas empires at the expense of a country that had largely ceased to exist.Macau had been raided by the Dutch in 1601, 1603, and 1607, but the Dutch invasion of 1622 represented the first real attempt to capture the city.The Hollanders, frustrated that their trading post at Hirado was unable to compete with the Portuguese traders at Nagasaki as a result of the latter's easy access to China, hoped that the capture of Macau would grant them a commercial base in China while at the same time depriving the Portuguese of the profitable Macau–Nagasaki route.