page_title: Pith helmet
section_title: Foreign Service helmet
hierarchical_section_title: Pith helmet / History / British variants / Foreign Service helmet
caption_attribution_description: Español: Oficiales del 3° de Línea. A la derecha Capitán Salvador Urrutia, que perteneció al 3° y al 6° de Línea. Segun la "Revista de Historia Militar, nr.12, 2013, pág. 33, En la primera campaña de Antofagasta y Tarapacá, los oficiales del Regimiento 3° de Línea utilizaron el Salacot o cucalón de corcho, modelo inglés, con las polainas blancas fabricadas en Francia, cuyos botones tenían estampados “Habillements Militaires”, que significaba vestimentas militares.
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: In what was then the British Empire, sun helmets made of pith first appeared in India during the Anglo-Sikh wars of the 1840s. Adopted more widely during the Indian Mutiny of 1857–59, they were generally worn by British troops serving in the Ashanti War of 1873, the Zulu War of 1878–79 and subsequent campaigns in India, Burma, Egypt and South Africa.
  During the Anglo-Zulu War, British troops dyed their white pith helmets with tea, mud or other makeshift means of camouflage. Subsequently, khaki-coloured pith helmets became standard issue for active tropical service.
  This distinctively shaped early headwear came to be known as the Colonial pattern helmet.
caption: Chilean officers of the 3rd Line Regiment wearing a pith helmet and white gaiters at the outset of the War of the Pacific in 1879.[17]
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