Port cities of the Indian Ocean rim are conceptualized as “nodes” connecting the Indian Ocean world. These cities along the littoral are cast as being a part of a littoral society, having more in common with each other than their interiors or “hinterlands.” This concept of a littoral society however is a confusing one due to its inconsistent use and the inability of current scholarship to explain its implications beyond simply a common maritime lifestyle. The exceptionalism of maritime life along with the fact that many cities were in fact walled contribute to a strict, spatially segregated understanding of the interactions of Indian Ocean littoral society. This is perhaps the danger of speaking so broadly across such a vast geography. While I do not suggest that a kind of Indian Ocean society does not exist, I think that the flatness of term “littoral society” can be remedied by careful sorting of the Indian Ocean into several large circulations, centered on redistribution ports that interact smaller networks of port cities. Tracing movement and exchange on a smaller scale then allows us to better piece together a large unit that can be brought into a conversation about the greater Indian Ocean. This paper considers the Western Indian Ocean to be one of the larger units of the Indian Ocean world, and will look specifically at flows between ports in the northern part of this unit in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This paper has two main goals: the first is to map relationships between port cities of the Northern Gulf (specifically Kuwait, Bushehr, Ma’shour and Muhammera) and the nature of the circulations between them. The second is to work important overland interactions into the story of the littoral society. It will do so by using British state records, as well as personal papers held by merchant families and oral history interviews.