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Mascate War, or Guerra dos Mascates in Portuguese was a conflict fought between rival groups of commerce in Olinda and Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.

In 1580, a succession crisis led to Portugal forming a personal union with Spain under the Habsburg King Philip II. The unification of the two Iberian kingdoms, known as the Iberian Union, lasted until 1640, although the institutions of both kingdoms remained separate. The Netherlands (the Seventeen Provinces) obtained independence from Spain in 1581, leading Philip II to prohibit commerce with Dutch ships, including in Brazil.

Since the Dutch had invested large sums in financing sugar production in the Brazilian Northeast, a conflict began with Dutch privateers plundering the coast: they sacked Salvador in 1604, from which they removed large amounts of gold and silver before a joint Spanish-Portuguese fleet recaptured the town.

From 1630 to 1654, the Dutch set up more permanently in commercial Recife and aristocratic Olinda, and with the capture of Paraiba in 1635, the Dutch controlled a long stretch of the coast most accessible to Europe (Dutch Brazil), without, however, penetrating the interior. The large Dutch ships were unable to moor in the coastal inlets where lighter Portuguese shipping came and went. Ironically, the result of the Dutch capture of the sugar coast was a higher price of sugar in Amsterdam. During the Nieuw Holland episode, the colonists of the Dutch West India Company in Brazil were in a constant state of siege, in spite of the presence of the Count John Maurice of Nassau as governor (1637–1644) in Recife. Nassau invited scientific commissions to research the local flora and fauna, resulting in added knowledge of the territory. Moreover, he set up a city project for Recife and Olinda, which was partially accomplished. Remnants survive to this day.

After several years of open warfare, the Dutch formally withdrew in 1661; the Portuguese paid off a war debt in payments of salt. Few Dutch cultural and ethnic influences remain.

The war against the Dutch sparkled a sentiment of nativism among the pernambucanos which would last for centuries. Early on the 18th century, Recife and Olinda engaged on an episode known as War of Mascates; Olinda, after the expelling of the Dutch, had returned to its condition of home for the Portuguese administrators and the sugarcane lords; Recife, on the other hand, had become an important commercial center, with the busiest port in Brazil. The War of Mascates (the Portuguese merchants of Recife) opposed the archaic aristocracy, based on power emanated from Portugal, against this new burgeoisie, which needed a more liberal environment to prosper; the mascates were led by Bernardo Vieira de Melo, who was arrested and sent to Portugal, were he died in prison; the hostilities ceased only in 1715, when, after Recife was declared independent from Olinda, the mascates surrendered.