Armenia, travels and studies.

Lynch, (1862–1913), traveller and politician, claimed Armenian descent via his maternal grandmother. 'He devoted considerable time and energy to a subject contemporaries referred to as the Armenian question. The plight of the Armenian nation was close to his heart, primarily, it seems, as a result of his personal ancestry. This familial connection appears to have inspired the two journeys he made to his maternal grandmother's homeland in 1893–4 and 1898. During the first he ascended Mount Ararat before visiting Erivan, Etchmiadzin, Ani, Kars, Van, Aghtamar, Bitlis, Mush, Erzurum, and Trebizond. In addition to keeping a detailed diary he documented his voyage with extensive photographs. After his first trip he conveyed in leading British periodicals (notably the Contemporary Review) his apprehensions about both Russian and Ottoman policy in their respective Armenian territories. His return visit in 1898 revealed 'a typically late Victorian stress on scientific accuracy' (Walker, 98). He concentrated on the region and gathering details about its geography, from the chemical composition of Lake Van to the precise measurements of the great crater of Nimrud Dagh.

Lynch eventually published his political, cultural, and scientific findings in two compendious volumes entitled Armenia Travels and Studies (1901). Aimed at rectifying the dearth of knowledge about the country in Britain, the monograph in many ways aspired to do for its author what Persia and the Persian Question (1892) had earlier done for George Curzon's career. Although reviewers were less charitable than they had been to the future proconsul, they generally commended Lynch's extraordinary photographs and his insights about Armenia's inhabitants, a people whose 'progressive tendencies' the author was convinced made them 'eager to assimilate Western thought' (Contemporary Review, July 1894, 24–6). He did not mention his Armenian heritage anywhere in the text, presumably fearing that such an admission might be seen to impair his objectivity. Despite their defects, Lynch's works remain for many Armenians 'the best evocation in words and pictures of a lost homeland only years before the hammer blow of deportation and massacre in 1915' (Young, 500). In the words of one historian, 'Henry F. B. Lynch, par son témoignage fondamental, s'avère être pour l'Arménie, le plus grand voyageur des temps modernes' (Kévorkian, 9)' (ODNB).