Great Britain has become Little England. Results of the Brexit referendum came in on Friday morning, confirming that the United Kingdom had voted to leave the European Union, a momentous decision that will have ripple effects for decades to come. But it taken take long for one constituency to air its opinion about the verdict: the currency and stock markets spoke right away.

This is, of course, just the beginning. The Indian markets also opened lower, with the Sensex dropping 900 points at the start of trade. The government put out statements quickly, insisting that India was prepared, with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley saying the "aim will be to smooth this volatility and minimise its impact on the economy in the short term".

However, South Asians on Twitter offered slightly more trenchant analyses, from whether India had anything to do with this to what lessons the subcontinent can take from what its former colonial overlords have just experienced.

Over in America, which will be facing its own dangerous election later in the year, the mood was equally dark. Many saw the British vote – which few were expecting to actually result in a Leave verdict – as a harbinger of scary times to come, seeing as very few expected the maverick Republican Donald Trump to be transformed into a serious presidential candidate.

As the UK woke up to its shock result, Britons took to Twitter to deal with this very British problem – and write obituaries for the country that once had an empire where the sun n ever set.