The Irish famine of 1879 was the last main Irish famine. Unlike the earlier Great Famines of 1740–1741 and 1845–1852, the 1879 famine (sometimes called the "mini-famine" or an Gorta Beag) caused hunger rather than mass deaths, due to changes in the technology of food production, different structures of land-holding (the disappearance of the sub-division of land and of the cottier class as a result of the earlier Great Famine), income from Irish emigrants abroad which was sent to relatives back in Ireland, and in particular a prompt response of the British government, which contrasted with its laissez-faire response in 1845–1852.
Radical Irish Member of Parliament Charles Stewart Parnell of the Home Rule League (later its leader), Michael Davitt of the Irish National Land League and some Irish clergy, notably Bishop Logue of Raphoe were actively involved in campaigning to put pressure on the British government and in the distribution of aid. Since the famine of the 1840s a railway system had been built, allowing food to be transported to the west of Ireland in days instead of weeks.
Aid also arrived from the United States (which now had a considerable Irish American population because of the previous famine), with public support further aroused by journalists such as James Redpath at the New-York Tribune, who contributed vivid, moving reports of the misery in Ireland. The Department of the Navy dispatched USS Constellation in March 1880, with over 3,300 barrels of food aboard, along with clothing. Similarly, $200,000 was collected by the New York Herald by late February 1880