Rogers has collected information regarding pirates and their vessels near the island on Madagascar.

Finding that a large number of the pirates have gone native, he has persuaded many of them to sign a petition to Queen Anne asking her for clemency.

While Rogers' expedition is profitable, when it returns to London in 1715, the British East India Company vetoes the idea of a colonial expedition to Madagascar, believing a colony is a greater threat to its monopoly than a few pirates.

Accordingly, Rogers turns his sights from Madagascar to the West Indies.

His connections include several of the advisers to the new king, George I, who had succeeded Queen Anne in 1714, and Rogers is able to forge an agreement for a company to manage the Bahamas, which are infested with pirates, in exchange for a share of the colony's profits.

The Bahamas are at this time, according to the Governor of Bermuda, "without any face or form of Government" and the colony is a "sink or nest of infamous rascals". (Little, Brian (1960). Crusoe's Captain. Odhams Press.)

The islands have been nominally governed by absentee Lords Proprietor, who have done little except appoint a new, powerless governor when the position falls vacant.

The Lords Proprietor, under the agreement that underlies Rogers' commission, lease their rights for a token sum to Rogers' company for twenty-one years.