Having spent the previous summer in Korea, it is indeed hot and humid. I wore leather scale armour, tropical wool tunic, splinted arms and legs and a steel helm with no real issues. But it was SCA practice, with breaks in the shade.

Well a few minutes in the shade for rest is actually pretty close to reality. In real fights they would fight for a few minutes and then break off to catch their breath and shout cursewords before fighting again for a minutes, then a break, fight again for a few minutes, then a break . . .

Combat fatigue isn't the only issue with armor in a tropical setting. There's also maintenance, which becomes a particularly tricky subject for metal armor in the rainy season because you can't rely on having a dry day for cleaning and hanging out your armor. Leather wears away (and rawhide rots) much more easily than in temperate regions, too, or at least requires significantly more maintenance to keep them in good condition, especially during the transition from the wet to the dry season and vice versa. Quilted armor gets soggy when it rains, which makes it heavy and squishy and uncomfortable to wear. Combine that with high temperatures that are quite conducive to fungal and bacterial action....

No wonder some (or rather many) tropical cultures chose to forego armor altogether. It's still possible to have armor, but the owners must be willing to spend a lot more resources on maintenance and stuff.

Couldn't lacquer potenially solve some of those problems?

I've just remembered that the Moro people of the Phillipines used to wear heavy mail and plate armour made of brass and horn right until the 19th century. Now the Phillipines is definitely tropical! :)

http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armo.../1940.8.2/

Good website that, I've just found more examples of tropical armour. These are from Nigeria:
http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armo...904.54.15/
http://webprojects.prm.ox.ac.uk/arms-and-armo...14.26.140/


Just found more stuff on Moro armour:
http://www.oriental-arms.com/item.php?id=1466
http://home.earthlink.net/~federicomalibago/armor.html

Uh... heya. I was reading the thread and composed a long reply before I realised I would be performing a pretty awful thread necro. However, seeing as I've written it, I might as well pop it up. Apologies for threadomancy!

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I'm going to go with chainmaille. It's comparatively easy to clean & with a theocratic state & big population shouldn't be too hard to have an underclass similar to squires whose job is to look after the troops' gear- considering the relative simplicity of making & fixing maille, your "squires" don't have to be well-educated, just hard-handed.

The basic piece of armour would be a chainmaille vest with rope strapping (possibly silk) to keep it in place. Little/no arm or leg armour (because you're moving them around in 100F/40C heat), a layered fabric vest with (quilted) half-sleeves to go under the vest to prevent chafing & add padding (because upper arms/shoulders are probably a good thing to protect!)- the quilting is extra-thick around the shoulders and maybe a light leather shoulder-guard is in place. Sweat keeps it cool, but the army probably has issues with hygiene & illness (like they wouldn't anyway in equatorial jungles). Over the maille goes a waterproofed suede poncho/tabard to keep the wet off as best as possible. When it gets rotten or too slicified, they throw it away/make it into string/whatever.

Heavier troops might have maille sleeves, bracers, or jack chains. Almost certainly going for shields rather than heavier armour because well, a shield only makes you hot if you move in it, and you can always sling it across your back while on the march. Fabric-backed splint would be an option for arm protection, either Byzantine-style "I'm wearing a picket fence on my legs" or the Brigandine-esque style with smaller splints. Perhaps jack chains with cops for the legs as well?

Does the army have a duckboard-laying-building division? Like a bunch of guys who run around laying planks wherever the army is going to go by foot? Again, a well-populated theocratic state is likely to have loads of extra labour to support their troops.

An alternative to chain (for cavalry and heavy infantry?) might be lamellar using silk or similar for the cording- if a plate gets too rusty, the support crew can rip it out and swap it for another one. Again, maintenance-heavy, but low skill requirements.

Anyways, having spent this summer in heat like you described (but dry- Australian summers are fun), and done some fighting on 40C/100F days, I can say that keeping the limbs light is more important for staying cool than anything else.

Attached is an awful, awful sketch of how I imagine them- Mainly because I wanted to play with my new scanner. Note the odd morion/burgonet cross with downwards-sloping rim to keep the rain off. Note that the sleeves are quilting, the bracers probably shouldn't be there, and that this soldier is wearing something similar to thai fisherman's pants.

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I'd say drop the trousers. Ventilation from below is very handy for armored people in a tropical climate. It'll also get rid of a lot of problems related to reaching under the armor to undo the trousers when the wearer needs to obey the call of nature.

There are a few posts about Sudanese warriors in the archives -- try searching for those.

I remember that bull-hide shields were popular in sub-Saharan Africa, as well.