An expedition to purchase slaves in Madagascar and sell them, with the East India Company's approval, in the Dutch East Indies allowed Rogers to gather details about pirates in Madagascar, with a possibility of destroying or reforming them and colonising Madagascar once they were gone.
Many of the pirates had gone native, and Rogers persuaded them to sign a petition asking for clemency from Queen Anne.
While the expedition was profitable, and he cleared his debts, the East India Company vetoed the idea of a colony on Madagascar, and Rogers turned his attention to the West Indies.
He was able to forge an agreement for a company to manage the Bahamas, which were infested with pirates and plagued by French and Spanish attacks, in exchange for a share of the colony's profits.
The islands were nominally governed by absentee Lords Proprietor, who surrendered the civil and military government of the islands to the crown except for quit rents and royalties, which they leased to Rogers' company for twenty-one years in return for a token payment.
So Rogers was appointed 'Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief' of the Bahamas with the power to suppress piracy by whatever means necessary. When he sailed from London in the Delicia to take up the appointment on 22 April 1718, he carried a royal proclamation which granted a pardon to any pirates who surrendered before 5 September.