  In this paper, we place the Milky Way (MW) in the context of similar-looking
galaxies in terms of their star-formation and chemical evolution histories. We
select a sample of 138 Milky-Way analogues (MWAs) from the SDSS-IV/MaNGA survey
based on their masses, Hubble types, and bulge-to-total ratios. To compare
their chemical properties to the detailed spatially-resolved information
available for the MW, we use a semi-analytic spectral fitting approach, which
fits a self-consistent chemical-evolution and star-formation model directly to
the MaNGA spectra. We model the galaxies' inner and outer regions assuming that
some of the material lost in stellar winds falls inwards. We also incorporate
chemical enrichment from type II and Ia supernovae to follow the alpha-element
abundance at different metallicities and locations. We find some MWAs where the
stellar properties closely reproduce the distribution of age, metallicity, and
alpha enhancement at both small and large radii in the MW. In these systems,
the match is driven by the longer timescale for star formation in the outer
parts, and the inflow of enriched material to the central parts. However, other
MWAs have very different histories. These divide into two categories:
self-similar galaxies where the inner and outer parts evolve identically; and
centrally-quenched galaxies where there is very little evidence of late-time
central star formation driven by material accreted from the outer regions. We
find that, although selected to be comparable, there are subtle morphological
differences between galaxies in these different classes, and that the
centrally-quenched galaxies formed their stars systematically earlier.
