Colonial Period: The Foreign Service Helmet
The earliest appearance of sun helmets made of pith occurred 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. This distinctively-shaped headwear came to be known as the Foreign Service helmet.
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.
While this form of headgear is particularly associated with both the British and the French empires, all European colonial powers used versions of it during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The French tropical helmet was first authorised for white colonial troops in 1878. The Dutch wore the helmet during the entire Aceh War (1873-1914) 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.
European officers commanding locally recruited indigenous troops, as well as civilian officials in African and Asian colonial territories, used the pith helmet. White troops serving in the tropics usually wore pith helmets; although on active service they sometimes used such alternatives as the wide-brimmed slouch hats, which were worn by US troops in the Philippines and by British Empire forces in the later stages of the Boer War.
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Famous quotes containing the words colonial, foreign, service and/or helmet:
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“There can only be one Commander-in-Chief. In these times, crises cannot be managed and wars cannot be waged by committee. To the ears of the world, the President speaks for the nation. While he is of course ultimately accountable to Congress, the courts, and the people, he and his emissaries must not be handicapped in advance in their relations with foreign governments as has sometimes happened in the past.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a bronze helmet on his head and clothed him with a coat of mail. David strapped Saul’s sword over the armor, and he tried in vain to walk, for he was not used to them.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 17:38-39.
Saul was very tall.