Russian Expansion under Catherine the Great 33Despite Russian optimism, prospects for the rapid improvement of
that country's trade with Iran and India were not very encouraging
even before Catherine complicated the situation by sending 30,000
men to conquer Iran. The difficulties were many, ranging from politi-
cal miscalculations and the insufficient development of a commercial
infrastructure to a host of geographical obstacles.
The first problem was that Russia had to compete against well-es-
tablished western European trading companies that did business in
India and the Persian Gulf. By the late eighteenth century, Russia
even imported Iranian silk from London.^21 Catherine's initial efforts
to compete with the European East India companies hinged on estab-
lishing a major commercial center on the southern coast of the Cas-
pian. (There were already a few Russian merchants living in small,
unfortified settlements on the coast, at Anzali in Gilan and Mashhad-
e Sar in Mazandaran.) She hoped that eventually the eastern Caucasus
could also be used for the same purpose, but the danger of war with
the Ottoman Empire over the annexation of the Crimea in 1783
forced her to postpone expansion in that area. (By the end of her
reign, the situation had reversed. The power of the Qajars proved
greater than the Russians had expected, so the focus of Russian ex-
pansionism shifted from the south coast of the Caspian, which was
subject to the Qajar shah, to the eastern Caucasus, where political
hegemony was still hotly contested.) She made two attempts to attain
her objective. Both failed, but the reasons for the failures were im-
portant because they were related to the worsening of relations with
Aqa Mohammad Khan Qajar and because Russian mistakes on these
two occasions were symptomatic of basic problems in that country's
attitude toward Muslims in the Iranian Empire.
The first attempt to set up a Russian trading "factory" was direct-
ed toward the southeastern corner of the Caspian in the vicinity of
Astarabad Bay in 1781. That area was attractive because the Russians
thought it was fairly near India. (As it happened, they underestimated
the distance from there to the Indus by more than half.) The leader
of the expedition, Count Voinovich, soon encountered opposition
from Aqa Mohammad, then a local princeling. The khan mistrusted
the Russians. He had heard rumors that the expedition was really
directed against him, which the Russian construction of a large fort
seemed to confirm. Voinovich attempted to win the khan's coopera-
tion through intimidation, which only made matters worse. Finally,
Aqa Mohammad made the Russians his prisoners until they agreed to
return to Russia which they did in 1782. Catherine regarded the khan's
actions in the affair as an offense for which he deserved punishment.