In recent scholarship there has been something of a ‘backlash’ against new directions in Indigenous histories that have adopted transnational or comparative approaches (for example the framework of settler colonialism). Some scholars contend that such approaches overshadow important local histories, or obscure Indigenous agency and experience. In this paper, I hope to shift this debate by exploring how Indigenous people themselves deployed comparative frames in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In doing so, I draw specifically on two case studies of Maori activism that exhibited a sophisticated comparative sensibility. First, campaigns for ‘Home Rule’ in the 1890s, that drew heavily on the Irish example. This campaign was underpinned by the aim of regaining control over ongoing land transfers. And second, the (very different) comparative understanding that informed the Young Maori Party’s adoption of ‘racial fusion’ as the central plank of their political platform in the early 1900s. In this discussion, I explore what Maori activists found to be useful points of connection, comparison and contrast as they drew insights from the experiences of other colonised people around the globe.