page_title: Pith helmet
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Pith helmet / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Keep it Under Your Hat! - Careless Talk Costs Lives [topi] whole: the image is positioned at the top with blue text in banner form placed below. Text in red is placed at the bottom. All is set against a plain white background. image: a khaki coloured pith helmet or solar topee military hat. text: "Keep it under your hat!" CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES
context_page_description: The pith helmet, also known as the safari helmet, sun helmet, topee, sola topee or topi, is a lightweight cloth-covered helmet made of sholapith. The pith helmet is an adaptation of the native salakot headgear of the Philippines.
  It was often worn by European travelers and explorers, in the varying climates found in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the tropics, but was also used in many other contexts. They were routinely issued to European military personnel serving overseas "in hot climates" from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century.
context_section_description: The origin of the pith helmet is the traditional Filipino headgear known as the salakot (Spanish salacot, a term still also used for pith helmets). They are usually dome-shaped or cone-shaped and can range in size from having very wide brims to being almost helmet-like. The tip of the crown commonly has a spiked or knobbed finial made of metal or wood. It is held in place by an inner headband and a chinstrap. These were originally made from various lightweight materials like woven bamboo, rattan, and bottle gourd; sometimes inlaid with precious metals, coated with water-proof resin, or covered in cloth.
  Salakots were used by native Filipino auxiliaries in the Spanish colonial military as protection against the sun and rain during campaigns. 
   They were adopted fully by both native and Spanish troops in the Philippines by the early 18th century. The military versions were commonly cloth-covered and gradually took on the shape of the Spanish cabasset or morion. This was copied first by the French colonial troops in Indochina in the 19th century (who called it the salacco or salacot, a term also later applied to the native Vietnamese cone-shaped or disk-like nón lá) due to its effectiveness in protecting from damp and humid weather. British and Dutch troops, and other colonial powers in nearby regions followed suit and the salacot became a common headgear for colonial forces in the mid-19th century.
  The salacot was most widely adopted by the British Empire in British India who originally called them "planters' hats." They began experimenting with derivative designs in search of a lightweight hat for troops serving in tropical regions. This led to a succession of designs ultimately resulting in the "Colonial pattern" pith helmet, as well as later designs like the Colind hat and the Wolseley pattern. The British Colonial pattern pith helmet, in turn, influenced the designs of other European pith helmets, including the Spanish and Filipino designs by the later half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
  Originally made of pith with small peaks or "bills" at the front and back, the British version of the helmet was covered by white cloth, often with a cloth band (or puggaree) around it, and small holes for ventilation.  Military versions often had metal insignia on the front and could be decorated with a brass spike or ball-shaped finial. The chinstrap would be either leather or brass chain, depending on the occasion. The base material later became the more durable cork, although still covered with cloth and frequently still referred to as "pith" helmet.
  During the Anglo-Zulu War, British troops dyed their white pith helmets with tea for camouflage. Soon khaki-coloured pith helmets became standard issue.
  While this form of headgear was particularly associated with the British Empire, all European colonial powers used versions of it during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The French tropical helmet was first authorised for colonial troops in 1878. The Dutch wore the helmet during the entire Aceh War (1873–1904) and the United States Army adopted it during the 1880s for use by soldiers serving in the intensely sunny climate of the Southwest United States. It was also worn by the North-West Mounted Police in policing North-West Canada, 1873 through 1874 to the North-West Rebellion and even before the stetson in the Yukon Gold Rush of 1898.
  French marines also introduced the early version of the salacco to the French Antilles, where it became the salako, a cloth-covered headgear still mostly identical to the Filipino salakot in shape.
  European officers commanding locally recruited indigenous troops, as well as civilian officials in African and Asian colonial territories, used the pith helmet. Troops serving in the tropics usually wore pith helmets, although on active service they sometimes used alternatives such as the wide-brimmed slouch hat worn by US troops in the Philippines and by British empire forces in the later stages of the Boer War.
caption: Classic khaki sun helmet depicted on a slogan
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