Butter exported from Cork to Lisbon.

As Anglo-Irish trade came to dominate the economy during the eighteenth century, these controls were made with a view to improving the access to English markets for Irish agrarian goods. After the suspension of the restrictions on live cattle in 1759, the English market was increasingly open to Irish agricultural goods but the heavily salted Irish butter was not to the English taste. However, although the subsequent reduction in salt met with some opposition from the West India provision merchants, the scheme was successful. Irish imports to Britain increased and the quality of butter improved, but even at the end of the century its market was confined to the growing working class, for whom its cheapness was a major consideration. When the restrictions on live cattle and other produce were finally repealed in 1774, Cork was exporting 34 per cent of all Irish butter destined for British markets and, by the late 1770s, the English market accounted for half of the butter exported from Cork. Although heavily salted butter continued to be sent to the West Indies and Portugal, increasing exports to England led to a decline in exports to other northern European countries.

The recurrent wars of the century, with their demand for military, and particularly naval, provisions, provided a further outlet that was not confined to Great Britain; French ships and French colonies were equally anxious to obtain these essential commodities. Indeed, France considered them so useful that between 1721 and 1741 the French mercantilist system was specifically altered to allow French ships to call at Cork on their way to the West Indies. Naturally these imperatives of supply and demand were not shared by the British mercantilists, particularly in times of war when provisions were of vital strategic importance. From 1740 the Irish administration was instructed in wartime to prevent provisions from being either sold directly to French ships or shipped for the same purpose to some neutral European port such as Stockholm, or to the Dutch West Indian entrepôt of St Eustatia, so convenient for both the French West Indian fleet and the French islands, particularly Martinique and Guadeloupe.