First thing to note is that processing sugar from beets in Europe was first developed experimentally in the 16th century, and it was not refined completely for commercial use until the early 19th century - so for most of that time, sugarcane was the cheaper and more accessible sweetener for the European colonial powers. Europe’s colonies were very much conducive to sugarcane production because of a.) a tropical climate, and b.) a cheap and plentiful workforce that was needed for cane’s labor-intensive extraction process.
The European beet industry (the biggest of its kind) took off with Britain’s blockade of French ports during the Napoleonic wars. In 1811, Napoleon ordered more research and investment to go into sugar beet production to offset the sugar shortage in France. From then on it grew to become sugarcane’s principal competitor in Europe, and by the 1880s its cultivation had spread to other temperate climates like the US and Canada. In order to compete, sugar planters from colonies like the Philippines, Java and the Caribbean often had to lobby for preferential trade treatment in colonial legislatures, invest in newer machinery, clear out more lands for monocropping or reduce wages - in the process contributing to vast class disparities in the agricultural areas of those regions.
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